• Question: How big is the biggest star

    Asked by anon-244324 to Ondrej, Jordan, Ed on 20 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Edward Banks

      Edward Banks answered on 20 Mar 2020:


      It can be a bit tricky to determine exactly how big stars are when they’re far away from us, so there can be some uncertainty. However, even if we take the lowest estimates for size, a star called WOH G64 (pretty boring name to be honest) has a radius of at least 1540 times that of the Sun! That’s a bit over a billion kiometers!

    • Photo: Jordan McElwee

      Jordan McElwee answered on 20 Mar 2020:


      The biggest star, as Ed said, is probably WOH G64, which is a type of star called a red hyper-giant. This probably isn’t the biggest star that’s ever existed however. There are a theoretical class of stars called Population III stars, which are the first stars to ever exist. These could have been 1000 times more massive than our Sun!

    • Photo: Ondrej Kovanda

      Ondrej Kovanda answered on 20 Mar 2020:


      I’ve never imagined that the largest star we know would have such a boring name… I’m disappointed! :/

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