You may be curious as to which of the stars in the night sky is the largest when you observe it. In reality, the largest star is invisible to the human eye from Earth, despite its immense magnitude. This star, which is referred to as UY Scuti, is so vast that it is difficult to fathom its dimensions.
The Full Details
UY Scuti is a red supergiant star that is far bigger than the next largest stars we know about. Its radius is close to 1,700 bigger than our Sun’s, and it’s some 5,900 light-years from Earth, which helps to explain why we can’t see it. It’s also located in the Zone of Avoidance, meaning that our view of it is obscured by the Milky Way.
This enormous star is located in the Scutum constellation and is classed as a pulsating variable star with a light source that varies in intensity. Its volume is 750 million times greater than that of our Sun. If you were to place UY Scuti in the centre of our Solar System, its outer shell or photosphere would go beyond Mars and the asteroid belt.
How and When Was It Discovered
UY Scuti is far larger than even the brightest stars in the sky, such as Sirius and Betelgeuse. Despite its amazing size, this star is invisible to the human eye from Earth due to its minimum brightness of magnitude 10.56 and maximum brightness of magnitude 8.29.
In 1860, a group of astronomers from the Bonn Observatory in Germany made the first observation of it. Even though they were able to detect it with their strong telescopes, the star’s immense size was not apparent to them at first.
With the development of technology and the ability to examine the light it emitted, astronomers were able to determine that it was a red supergiant, dwarfing all other stars in the sky.
What Are the Next Biggest Stars
The list of the biggest stars includes interesting objects like R136a1. Considered the heaviest star in the universe, it’s classed as a hyper. Massive star with a weight of around 200 times our Sun. It’s one of the Wolf–Rayet stars that weigh more than others due to their high concentration of carbon, ionized helium, and nitrogen.
WOH G64 and WOH 5170 are both huge stars in the Large Magellanic Cloud, where HD 269551 is also found.
VY Canis Majoris is another that deserves its place on this list. This red hypergiant sits in the Canis Major constellation and is 1,420 times bigger than our Sun, and if placed in our Solar System, its surface would go past the orbit carried out by Jupiter.
AH Scorpii is a red supergiant that catches the eye of astronomers because its brightness levels vary considerably, as well as its size. Located in the Scorpius constellation, its size and brightness help make it stand out.
What Do UY Scuti and Other Giant Stars Teach Us
The huge dimensions of UY Scuti make it extremely difficult for us to picture it. This is one of the areas where we can clearly see the difficulty humans have in grasping the size and variety of objects that fill our skies and how they all add up to create a fascinating universe.
It’s unclear if improvements in astronomy methods and tools resulted in the discovery of more big stars in the cosmos. Though we can’t be positive that something larger isn’t hiding out there, UY Scut is currently the undeniable giant of the skies.