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What is the biggest star yet discovered? It's harder than you might think to answer this question. But here's a short tour of big, bigger and absolutely enormous stars - including some impossible ones.

How Big Are the Biggest Stars

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Our Sun looks very small compared to red giant Arcturus. Arcturus is in the constellation Boötes and is one of the brightest stars in the sky. But compare the Sun and Arcturus to the supergiant Antares! If Antares were where the Sun is, it would fill the inner Solar System out past the orbit of Mars. Antares is in the constellation Scorpius and is known as "the heart of the Scorpion".

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This diagram is a summary of the types of main sequence stars, giants and supergiants. The Sun is a G-type star and the Trapezium star Theta1 Orionis C is an O-type. There's quite a difference in size. But the big hot stars are short-lived compared to stars like our Sun. And red dwarfs can go on for a trillion years. Size matters if you're a star.

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A lovely picture of the Pistol Star and its nebula taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. The star is massive, one of the brightest that we know of. The star is throwing off a lot of mass in its stellar wind. Observations have confirmed that it's very likely that the nebula exists because it's made from the material released in the Pistol Star's stellar wind.

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This short video compares the sizes of Earth, the Sun, Rigel and VY Canis Majoris . Rigel is the brightest star in the constellation Orion. It's actually a triple star system, but the primary star is a blue-white supergiant. VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant. If it were where the Sun is, it would reach out to the orbit of Saturn.


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