Learn about the largest star discovered so far: UY Scuti... a wonder of space
There are things in the universe that would make the largest objects on Earth look like microscopic images...and one of these things is the star UY Scuti.
UY Scuti is not just a star bigger than our Sun, it is a marvel. If you need 1.3 million Earth-sized planets to reach the size of the Sun, this star is 5 billion times the Sun.
That is, if it were the Earth, its radius would reach Saturn. That is, to pass through it, you would need to fly in a Boeing plane traveling at a speed of a thousand kilometers per hour for more than a thousand years without stopping.
It is a bright red giant, pulsating variable star, located in the constellation of Gear. It is one of the leading candidates for being the largest known star by its radius. It has a mean radius of 1708 solar radii, or a diameter of 2.4 billion kilometres (1.5 billion mi; 15.9 AU).
It is about 9,500 light years away from Earth.
If we put it at the center of the solar system, its photosphere would engulf the orbit of Jupiter, although its radius is not known for certain, and may be larger than that of Saturn.
Coordinates: Skymap 18 h 27 m 36.53 s, −12° 27′ 58.9 UY Scuti (BD-12° 5055)
UY Scuti was first catalogued in 1860 by German astronomers at the Bonn Observatory, who were completing a survey of stars for the Bonner Durchmusterung Stellar Catalogue.[10] It was designated BD-12°5055, the star 5,055 between 12°S and 13°S of 0 hours right ascension.
Upon discovery in the second survey, the star was found to have changed slightly in brightness, indicating that it was a new variable star. According to the international standard for naming variable stars, it was named UY Scuti, indicating that it was the 38th variable star in the constellation Scutum.
UY Scuti lies a few degrees north of the A-type star Gamma Scuti and northeast of the Eagle Nebula. Although the star is very bright, it is only about 9 times as bright as seen from Earth, due to its distance and location in the zone of avoidance within the Cygnus Rift.
UY Sct is a dust-shrouded red supergiant classified as a quasi-circular variable with an approximate pulsation period of 740 days.
In the summer of 2012, the AMBER interferometer with the Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the Atacama Desert in Chile was used to measure the parameters of three red supergiants near the Galactic Center region: UY Scuti, AH Scorpii, and KW Sagittarii. They determined that the three stars are more than 1,000 times more massive than the Sun and more than 100,000 times brighter than the Sun. The sizes of the stars were calculated "using the Rosseland radius, the location of which in optical depth is 2/3, with distances adopted from previous publications. UY Scuti was found to be the largest and brightest of the three stars measured, at 1,708 ± 192 R☉ (1.188 × 109 ± 134,000,000 km; 7.94 ± 0.89 AU) based on an angular diameter of 5.48 ± 0.10 mas and an assumed distance of 2.9 ± 0.317 kiloparsecs (KPC) (about 9,500 ± 1030 light years) which was originally derived in 1970 based on modelling of the UY Sct spectrum. [9] The luminosity is then calculated to be 340,000 L at an effective temperature of 3,365 ± 134 K , giving an initial mass of 25 M☉ (possibly up to 40 M☉ for a non-rotating star).
It can be seen that a hypothetical object moving at the speed of light would take about seven hours to travel along the great circle of UY Scuti while it would take 14.5 seconds to orbit the Sun.
Direct measurements of the UY Sct parallax by Gaia Data Release 2 recently gave a parallax of 0.6433 ± 0.1059 mas, yielding a much smaller distance of approximately 1.55 kiloparsecs (5100 ly), and thus much lower luminosity and radius values of approximately 86,300–87,100 L☉ and 755 R☉ respectively. [18] However, the Gaia parallax may be unreliable, at least until further observations, due to the very high level of astronomical noise.
Based on current models of stellar evolution, UY Scuti has begun fusing helium, and is continuing to fusing hydrogen in a shell around the core. UY Scuti's location deep in the Milky Way disk suggests that it is a metal-rich star.
After fusing heavy elements, its core will begin to produce iron, disrupting the balance of gravity and radiation in its core, resulting in a supernova collapse. Stars like UY Scuti are expected to evolve again to higher temperatures to become yellow supergiants, luminous blue variables, or Wolf-Rayet stars, creating powerful stellar winds that shed their outer layers and expose the core, before exploding as a type IIb, IIn, or type Ib/Ic supernova.
If the attached image has amazed you, it is actually much larger. If we put the real measurements, you would need a microscope to see the sun next to it. The amazing thing is that it is just a point of light that is barely visible in the Milky Way galaxy, which in turn is just a speck of dust in the universe.
Some information about this star
1 - If you need 1,300,000 planets the size of the Earth to reach the size of the sun, then this star is 5 billion times twice the size of the sun....!!!??.
2 - If we put it, for example, in the place of the sun, its photosphere will engulf the orbit of Jupiter.
3 - To cross just a drop, you would need to fly a jet plane traveling at a speed of a thousand kilometers per hour for more than a thousand years without stopping.
4 - It is about 9,500 light-years away from Earth.
5 - More than 100,000 times brighter than the sun
The strange thing is that it is just a point of light that is barely visible in the Milky Way Galaxy, which in turn is just a speck of dust in the universe.
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