Thread: The largest star known

I think I seen that once before. Its pretty cool at how large it is. Just imagine if/when that star goes HyperNova, they might have to invent a new calssification for that one being how massive it is.

Jesus Christ.

I wonder if it has a system of planets... Thats an interesting prospect.

Thanks for sharing this. This is just plain amazing.

I remembered a video I saw that compared star sizes. I searched for it and found it on this page:

http://www.samtsai.com/p468

scroll down to see the video.

Oh my!!

That's fu*kin nuts.

Now imagine how big YOU are compared to the Earth.

Thats what I've been saying with a few friends.

Our Sun is speck to that. Jupiter is a speck to our Sun. Earth is a speck to Jupiter. We are specks to Earth. THAT is a speck to our galaxy and our galaxy is too small to even qualify as a speck to our universe.
And lets extend that further. Then you look at bugs that are specks to us as humans, and then you look at bacteria which are specks to bugs, and then you look at atoms which are specks to bacteria, and then you realize that our entire universe is made of atoms.

The term "Mind Fuck" is no longer adequate.

Originally Posted by ExoByte

Thats what I've been saying with a few friends.

Our Sun is speck to that. Jupiter is a speck to our Sun. Earth is a speck to Jupiter. We are specks to Earth. THAT is a speck to our galaxy and our galaxy is too small to even qualify as a speck to our universe.
And lets extend that further. Then you look at bugs that are specks to us as humans, and then you look at bacteria which are specks to bugs, and then you look at atoms which are specks to bacteria, and then you realize that our entire universe is made of atoms.

The term "Mind Fuck" is no longer adequate.

Talk about "Mind Fuck!"

That gave me an extremely trippy feeling.

True dat, homey.

Is it just me or is the sun casting a shadow onto it?

WT*? NO WAY! I can't beleive it. It's too big...

honestly, I'm not suprised. The universe is so amazing and beyond us, I've had my mind blown way too many times thinking about the things like the stuff Exo said. I've built up a mind fuck tolerance to shit like this.

Originally Posted by Half/Dreaming

honestly, I'm not suprised. The universe is so amazing and beyond us, I've had my mind blown way too many times thinking about the things like the stuff Exo said. I've built up a mind fuck tolerance to shit like this.

I guese I should get used to this too. But I mean, look it the size of that thing. It's like more than 100 000 times bigger than the sun. WTF?

2100 times bigger actually, but the point still stands

Originally Posted by ExoByte

2100 times bigger actually, but the point still stands

thanks

Originally Posted by ExoByte

2100 times bigger actually, but the point still stands

That's just the diameter. In terms of volume, the difference is in the billions.

That picture looks like the comparison between the sun and VV Cephei A. It is in a You Tube video called "The Size of Our World????". Since that video was made, an even bigger star was discovered (last summer), but scientists are still not sure how much bigger it is than VV Cephei A. It might be as much as three times bigger in volume. All of those stars are in our galaxy. Scientists are still not equipped to tell how big stars in other galaxies are.

Remember that the sun's volume is about a million times greater than Earth's.

This video uses models to show the differences...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HKPUYZZbWxs

Rigel is Orion's left knee, and Betelgeuse is Orion's right shoulder.

Originally Posted by ExoByte

I wonder if it has a system of planets... Thats an interesting prospect.

Thanks for sharing this. This is just plain amazing.

If it did have any planets they would have all been swallowed up when the star begame a red supergiant.

I read somewhere you can be 100,000,000 miles away and still not be able to see one side to another. In other words it looks like a wall.

Just imagine the gravitational pull of that bastard!!! It probably pulls in solar systems.

Heh, this reminded me...



You never know.

Well, in the universe, ANYTHING could be bigger than our Sun. Maybe there is something bigger than even the hypergiant star!

This video supposedly compares the size of your computer screen to the size of the known universe. I question the validity of it, but if nothing else, it is a really good psychedelic video to trip out on.

If the final frame were the size of your screen, the full set would be larger than the known universe.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ATWrMlIKRBk

Thats perrty awsome. Hard to think theres more on the way, a bit later.

A giant cloud of hydrogen gas is speeding toward a collision with our Milky Way Galaxy, and when it hits -- in less than 40 million years -- it may set off a spectacular burst of stellar fireworks.


GBT image of Smith's Cloud, which is headed toward a collision with the Milky Way.

Cedit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF


"The leading edge of this cloud is already interacting with gas from our Galaxy," said Felix J. Lockman, of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), leader of a team of astronomers who used the National Science Foundation's Robert C. Byrd Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to study the object. The scientists presented their findings to the American Astronomical Society's meeting in Austin, Texas.

The cloud, called Smith's Cloud, after the astronomer who discovered it in 1963, contains enough hydrogen to make a million stars like the Sun. Eleven thousand light-years long and 2,500 light-years wide, it is only 8,000 light-years from our Galaxy's disk. It is careening toward our Galaxy at more than 150 miles per second, aimed to strike the Milky Way's disk at an angle of about 45 degrees.

"This is most likely a gas cloud left over from the formation of the Milky Way or gas stripped from a neighbor galaxy. When it hits, it could set off a tremendous burst of star formation. Many of those stars will be very massive, rushing through their lives quickly and exploding as supernovae. Over a few million years, it'll look like a celestial New Year's celebration, with huge firecrackers going off in that region of the Galaxy," Lockman said.

When Smith's Cloud was first discovered, and for decades after, the available images did not have enough detail to show whether the cloud was part of the Milky Way, something being blown out of the Milky Way, or something falling in.

Lockman and his colleagues used the GBT to make an extremely detailed study of hydrogen in Smith's Cloud. Their observations included nearly 40,000 individual pointings of the giant telescope to cover the cloud with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution. Smith's Cloud is about 15 degrees long in the sky, 30 times the width of the full moon.

"If you could see this cloud with your eyes, it would be a very impressive sight in the night sky," Lockman said. "From tip to tail it would cover almost as much sky as the Orion constellation. But as far as we know it is made entirely of gas -- no one has found a single star in it."

The detailed GBT study dramatically changed the astronomers' understanding of the cloud. Its velocity shows that it is falling into the Milky Way, not leaving it, and the new data show that it is plowing up Milky Way gas before it as it falls.

"Its shape, somewhat similar to that of a comet, indicates that it's already hitting gas in our Galaxy's outskirts," Lockman said. "It is also feeling a tidal force from the gravity of the Milky Way and may be in the process of being torn apart. Our Galaxy will get a rain of gas from this cloud, then in about 20 to 40 million years, the cloud's core will smash into the Milky Way's plane," Lockman explained.

Anyone else hear of this? Here's a link to some pictures.

http://www.nrao.edu/pr/2008/smithscloud/

The thing is, our star is the smallest type of star anyway, so that's not really a fair contest. Also that star is a red giant, which is less dense than our sun, so again, not a fair contest.

I hope that that thing turns into a gamma-ray burst.

Originally Posted by Goldney

I hope that that thing turns into a gamma-ray burst.

I've seen stuff about those on the Discovery and Science channels. That would be crazy if it did! If they could somehow predict the collapse, maybe we could view it from Earth!