What is the largest star in the universe?

The largest star that we have close to us is the Sun. Inside the Sun, more than a million Earths could fit. But in the universe there are much bigger stars. What is the largest star in the universe?

The largest known star in the universe, UY Scuti, is a hypergiant nearly 5 billion times larger than the Sun. It has a radius about 1,700 times the radius of the Sun.

Fun Facts about UY Scuti

In 1860, German astronomers at the Bonn Observatory first cataloged UY Scuti, at the time naming it BD -12 5055, according to  Astronomy Magazine.

After a second observation, they noticed that it got brighter and dimmer over a period of 740 days, which led to its classification as a variable star. The star Antares is another example of a variable star.

The star is located near the center of the Milky Way, about 9,500 light-years from Earth, in the constellation Scutum.

Hypergiant stars are larger than supergiant and giant stars. They are rare stars that shine a lot. Due to rapidly moving stellar winds they lose much of their mass.

These stars do not usually last very long. They exhaust their nuclear combustion very quickly due to the high temperatures and densities of their interior regions. Smaller stars like the sun live a thousand times longer, about 10 billion years.

Although it is a hypergiant star, it is not the most massive star. Its mass is only about 30 times the mass of the Sun. The most massive known star in the universe is R136a1, which has 215 times the mass of the Sun, located in the Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud. But it is not bigger than the UY Scuti, it is 57 times smaller.

So the star UY Scuti is the largest star in the universe ever seen .

What do you think?