VY Canis Majoris

[UglyCasanova]

Unreal. Look at the size of that star compared to our sun!

 

[vshah]

insane

 

[disappoint]

balls

 

[glenn1]

Here ya go OP:

http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

http://scaleofuniverse.com/

 

[Printer Bandit]

full screen it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEheh1BH34Q

 

[momeNt]

I know we can see these things with our fancy little telescopes. But do we know they actually exist?

 

[Grooveriding]

I know we can see these things with our fancy little telescopes. But do we know they actually exist?

It's all a ploy by the scientists. They went into orbit years ago and set up black bristol board filled with tiny holes where they then installed light brite pegs. :sneaky:

Anyways..

This sort of information is always so awe inspiring and makes me wish I had been born far into the future to see where humans have managed to progress at that point. Hopefully our species manages to avoid wiping ourselves out, or being wiped out by a cosmic event, so we can reach a point where great minds find a way to bend space and we start to meaningfully explore everything out there. That point will be the best time in history to be alive and kicking.

 

[John Connor]

Over 1 billion miles in diameter! HOLY SHIT!

I have seen a sun and planet comparison on YouTube, but this puts it into better perspective.

 

[momeNt]

It's all a ploy by the scientists. They went into orbit years ago and set up black bristol board filled with tiny holes where they then installed light brite pegs. :sneaky:

Anyways..

This sort of information is always so awe inspiring and makes me wish I had been born far into the future to see where humans have managed to progress at that point. Hopefully our species manages to avoid wiping ourselves out, or being wiped out by a cosmic event, so we can reach a point where great minds find a way to bend space and we start to meaningfully explore everything out there. That point will be the best time in history to be alive and kicking.

Alls I'm saying is that the density of these stars are so low that they do not have sufficient gravity to stop any of its mass from escaping. So we are drawing a circle around the light it emits and calling it a singular "thing". I don't really know if that's fair.

 

[mnewsham]

UY Scuti is larger at 1,708 ±192 solar radii vs. VY Canis Majoris at 1,420 solar radii.

(our sun = 1 solar radii)

 

[meltdown75]

I've been watching Cosmos. Awesome show!

 

[z1ggy]

I've seen this pic before. It's insane! I think a cool one would be comparing Canis to our Sun side by side. On second thought though...Would the sun even be visible to the eye next to it? Crap.

 

[Paratus]

Alls I'm saying is that the density of these stars are so low that they do not have sufficient gravity to stop any of its mass from escaping. So we are drawing a circle around the light it emits and calling it a singular "thing". I don't really know if that's fair.

Let's think about this for a minute. Our sun which is much smaller has more than enough gravity to keep large planets in orbit, farther out than the radius of this hyper massive star. But this hyper massive star with enormous amounts of mass, much more than our sun, doesn't have enough gravity to keep itself together?

:hmm:

 

[UglyCasanova]

I've seen this pic before. It's insane! I think a cool one would be comparing Canis to our Sun side by side. On second thought though...Would the sun even be visible to the eye next to it? Crap.

They have that picture in a link at the top.

 

[JTsyo]

Let's think about this for a minute. Our sun which is much smaller has more than enough gravity to keep large planets in orbit, farther out than the radius of this hyper massive star. But this hyper massive star with enormous amounts of mass, much more than our sun, doesn't have enough gravity to keep itself together?

:hmm:

The star is not hyper massive in mass, it's only about 17 times the mass of the sun. Wiki has it's average density listed as 5-10 mg/m^3, compare that to sea level density of air: 1.225 kg/m3. That's like 5 orders of magnitude.

 

[z1ggy]

They have that picture in a link at the top.

Ah yes I see now. Basically a little pin prick, even when zoomed in.

Space bugs my mind out sometimes, to think, something we view as incredibly massive (our sun) is literally a small dot in size compared to another star. Not to mention even those largest stars are minute dots in a sea or other dots in a galaxy.

Then you have those wide field pictures taken by Hubble of a sea of galaxies, each of those looking like small little bubbles themselves.

 

[OVerLoRDI]

The scale of the universe is absolutely staggering.

 

[NikolaeVarius]

The star is not hyper massive in mass, it's only about 17 times the mass of the sun. Wiki has it's average density listed as 5-10 mg/m^3, compare that to sea level density of air: 1.225 kg/m3. That's like 5 orders of magnitude.

Because we need a way to conceptualize these things. The average density of a supermassive black hole is less than water, but we still call it one "thing" because humans don't really have a way to conceptualize these objects in other ways.

Also, there is still controversy over how to define a "star" because the atmosphere of a star can extend to such a hugely arbitrary amount. Sort of like how its still hard to define how "large" earths atmosphere is because it extends REALLY REALLY far into space. The ISS is at most 2000 km away from ground level on earth and yet we still say its in "space" even through the atmosphere of earth is still technically 100,000km out.

 

[smackababy]

They look about the same size on the picture.

 

[vi edit]

Over 1 billion miles in diameter! HOLY SHIT!

I have seen a sun and planet comparison on YouTube, but this puts it into better perspective.

Wow. Yeah it does. It's 93 million miles from the earth to sun. This thing is 10x further than our orbit. In fact this thing if centered where the sun was, would stretch out to where saturn is.

 

[alkemyst]

UY Scuti is larger at 1,708 ±192 solar radii vs. VY Canis Majoris at 1,420 solar radii.

(our sun = 1 solar radii)

Beat me to it. I was going to come in and say Canis Majoris is no longer the largest star.

 

[Scarpozzi]

The scale of the universe is absolutely staggering.

Kind of makes you feel insignificant, doesn't it....

Anyone got a liver for me?

 

[TechBoyJK]

almost as big as my deeek

 

[mnewsham]

Beat me to it. I was going to come in and say Canis Majoris is no longer the largest star.

one of the main reasons is VY Canis Majoris was originally estimated to be around 1900 solar radii. More recent observations have come to show it is decently smaller than first thought. It is now the thought to be the 9th largest star we know of, there are several that are around that size or larger, including UY Scuti which is the thought to be the current known largest star.

 

[DrPizza]

Because we need a way to conceptualize these things. The average density of a supermassive black hole is less than water, but we still call it one "thing" because humans don't really have a way to conceptualize these objects in other ways.

Also, there is still controversy over how to define a "star" because the atmosphere of a star can extend to such a hugely arbitrary amount. Sort of like how its still hard to define how "large" earths atmosphere is because it extends REALLY REALLY far into space. The ISS is at most 2000 km away from ground level on earth and yet we still say its in "space" even through the atmosphere of earth is still technically 100,000km out.

Are you sure about that density? If you simply use the Schwartschild radius of the black hole, I think that radius is something like 3km for every multiple of our sun's mass. Regardless, it's pretty small, and has more mass than the mass of our sun. In other words, it's pretty damn dense, or so I thought.

Also, the altitude of the ISS is between 200 and 300km above the surface of the Earth. That's quite a bit less than 2000km. Your technical answer for the atmosphere is good enough though. I think it's defined as where the force from the radiation pressure of the sun on a hydrogen atom exceeds earth's gravitational pull - about half way to the moon.