UY Scuti , Largest Star in our Galaxy put into context

To us our Sun is big , you could fit 1 million Earths into it and perhaps squeeze a couple more in for good measure but the red supergiant UY Scuti takes big to a whole new level , it's 1,700 times larger than our Sun’s radius and has 21 billion times the volume , UY Scuti lives just 9,500 light years away.


To put those numbers into context if our planet was an 8-inch diameter ball our Sun would measure about 73 feet in diameter, UY Scuti by comparison would be 125,000 feet in diameter

UY Scuti was first discovered in 1860 by astronomers at the Bonn Observatory but it wasn't until observations using the Very Large Telescope in Chile in 2012 that astronomers realised the sheer size of this heavyweight of our Galaxy , if we were to replace our Sun with it it would take up space nearly as far out as Saturn or perhaps further.
Youtuber J Dube has put together this animation to show how UY Scuti would fit into our Solar System and the effect it would have.


How's that for amazing !

a reply to: gortex

Nothing a good dollop of sunblock cant take care of!

I don't think the human mind can grasp that scale. We think "Wow, that's big" but after a certain point, it's just numbers. We are standing on a planet that to us, is huge. The Sun, if we could get close enough, would be mind numbing. Something that would make our Sun look like a speck on the window is just...........

a reply to: gortex

What I wonder is where would the "habitable" zone be with something that size?

So far away from anything we wouldn't even think such a speck could contain life?

originally posted by: DAVID64
I don't think the human mind can grasp that scale. We think "Wow, that's big" but after a certain point, it's just numbers. We are standing on a planet that to us, is huge. The Sun, if we could get close enough, would be mind numbing. Something that would make our Sun look like a speck on the window is just...........

It would take a passenger jet 24 hours or 1 day to round the Earth once at 1100mph. With some stars, a spacecraft traveling the same speed would take 1100 years. or 401500 days.

The inhabitable zone around that star would require a planetary period of centuries and not days.

originally posted by: IslandOfMisfitToys
a reply to: gortex

What I wonder is where would the "habitable" zone be with something that size?

So far away from anything we wouldn't even think such a speck could contain life?

There would not be one.

A star that large would be at the end of it life and would have had a extremly short life to beguin with. There would be barely enough time for microbes to evolve.

a reply to: DAVID64

I don't think the human mind can grasp that scale

You mention scale.

Here is how to grasp the scale of the universe

A Solar Black Hole

No one tell the dog star...

It's rarely possible to conceive terrestrial objects of huge size...mountains, etc...

Something like that? *poof* goes the mind.