RENSE: The Size Of Our World

[Dreamlight]

That is big... and it's only the KNOWN hugest star... there can be far bigger ones... ok, if it's bigger with the diameter of the Sun, it wouldn't be of any change, but still...

^
Strange to say that isn't it?

You're right, it would be hard to show the difference like that. But what if there's one that makes VV Cephei A look like a pixel?

Change the scale for a bigger one.  Out to the orbit of Saturn or something.  Or if there's one that makes VV Cephei look like a pixel, then out to maybe the Oort cloud, with an itty bitty circle in the middle for the orbit of Pluto or Eris or some such?

[El Jacko]

It might be worth saying that all the stars mentioned there from Pollux upwards are Red Giant/Supergiant stars; the result of a star somewhat larger than our sun running out of hydrogen and dying. What is more daunting is the power of some other stars we know of, such as Eta Carinae, which sit right on the very limits of stability. These are the type of stars which evolve into hypergiants such as VY Canis Majoris and can ultimately evolve past the Neutron boundary into a Black Hole.

Unfortunately, it is highly unlikely that any of these supermassive stars can sustain life. With such terrifying power output, they will burn out within several million years (as opposed to ~10bn years for Sol), and burn so hot as to emit radiation in the X-ray spectrum. Couple that with serious instability due to fusion pressure (Eta Carinae itself was believed to have gone supernova a few years back, but this was actually put down to a solar flare so large it resembled a full blown nova) and it becomes a spectacular, but dangerous, display.

['Tsamsiyu]

If that made you wow... watch this... I was gawking at my screen at the size comparison part for about 10 minutes...

Star Size


This is a good one to get an idea of the size of VY Canis Majoris on it's own...

Star Size Comparison HD

[Payä Tìrol]

It's also worth noting a couple of things about the Red Hypergiants:

VY CMa comes out at around 1800-2100 Solar Radii, so around 1.36 x 10¹⁵cm
or a volume of about 1.05 x 10⁴⁶cm³.
It's mass is estimated at around 30-40 Solar Masses, so around 6.93 x 10³⁴g.

This gives us an average star density of 6.6x10^-12g/cm³.
As a comparison, an average density of Earth's atmosphere is something like 1.2x10^-3g/cm³, so our own atmosphere is roughly a billion times more dense than these stars (even ignoring the fact that it must have a dense core, so the outer layers would be even more diffuse)

[Kekerusey]

Hey everyone, check this interactive size-map out:

http://htwins.net/scale/index.html

Wow! I posted that at all my sites!!!

Keke

[Kekerusey]

If that made you wow... watch this... I was gawking at my screen at the size comparison part for about 10 minutes...

And another very cool one (posted as above)

Keke