There are countless celestial bodies in the vast universe, and these celestial bodies are universal and have participated in the evolution of the universe. Such celestial bodies are the stars we know well. I believe you will not be unfamiliar with stars. They are the beacon of the universe and the beacon for mankind to explore the universe.
If there is no light from stars, then the universe will become a truly dark space, and we will not be able to observe the existence of various galaxies through astronomical telescopes. It is the existence of a star, and the energy radiation it emits brings some light, so that we can observe the beauty of the universe.
A star is not just a simple glowing ball, it is very important to the evolution of the universe. It can be said that without the participation of stars, the current universe would not be so exciting, let alone the existence of life, the birth of mankind. After the Big Bang, the first type of celestial body to appear is the star, which was born in the nebula.
After a star is born, it converts a large number of hydrogen elements in the universe into helium, oxygen, iron and other elements through nuclear fusion. When the star reaches its final stage and a supernova occurs, it can be transformed into heavier elements, thus enriching the element composition of the universe. Only after having these abundant heavy elements, the life on earth was born.
It can be seen that stars are an indispensable type of celestial bodies in the universe, without them there would be no current universe. It is precisely because of the importance of stars to the universe that human beings have been exploring and studying stars without interruption after they walked out of the earth, and when we search for galaxies, planets, etc., the first step is to search for stars.
Only by observing the light of a star can we hope to discover the existence of planets around it. Stars are dazzling existence in the universe. They flash and flash in all corners of the universe. The stars we see when we look up at night are basically stars that are relatively close to us.
Of course, the number of stars we can observe with the naked eye is very limited. Only through astronomical telescopes can we observe more and more distant stars. Stars can emit dazzling light, indicating that there is a nuclear fusion reaction inside it, and celestial bodies are conditional to become stars, that is, the mass must reach a relatively high level, so stars are relatively large in terms of mass and volume. .
So how big is the largest star in the universe? Earlier, scientists observed and discovered UY Scutum, which is believed to be the largest star known to mankind. UY Scutum is a red supergiant star located in the constellation Scutum. It was discovered by German astronomers as early as 1860. Later, it was discovered by observation that its radius is about 1708 times that of the sun, which is 1.2 billion kilometers, and its volume is equivalent to 49 of the sun. Billion times.
However, with the continuous improvement of human observation technology, new observations and analysis of UY Scutum have been carried out through Gaia satellites and Ibarco satellites. It is found that the past observational data is seriously overestimated. New data show that: UY Scuti The radius is about 530 million kilometers, which is equivalent to 755 times the radius of the sun.
The new observations have made UY Scutum lose its position as the star leader, so who will replace it as the new star leader? Through new observations, astronomers have observed a larger star, Stephenson 2-18, with a radius of about 1.5 billion kilometers, which is 2150 times the radius of the sun, and much larger than UY Scutum.
So is Stephenson 2-18 the largest known star? Of course not. According to the latest observational data, Sagittarius V1943 is currently the largest known star, about 1800 light years away from the solar system. According to the current preliminary observational data, its radius is 2243 times that of the sun, and its radius can reach 1.64 billion kilometers. , Bigger than Stephenson 2-18.
This volume can hold 13.1 billion suns, and it is a real giant without hail. If Sagittarius V1943 is placed in the position of the sun, its orbit can be extended to the position of Saturn, and the eight major planets in the solar system will also lose six, leaving only The two on the lower edge, Uranus and Neptune were planets in the habitable zone at that time.
How big is the mass of such a huge star? In fact, the mass of Sagittarius V1943 is not large, only about 20 times the mass of the sun, and the average density is very low. The reason why its size is so huge is that the larger the mass of the star, the lower its life span, and it will enter the shell expansion stage earlier.
Sagittarius V1943 is currently very unstable due to its large mass. The outer shell material is losing a lot. It has become a red supergiant star that is constantly expanding in size. It is estimated that it will not take too long before it will explode. The final outcome is It may evolve into a black hole.
So is there any star larger than Sagittarius V1943 in the universe? Believe that it still exists. We must know the size of the universe and the mass limit of stars. Scientists do not have an accurate figure at present. The greater the mass, the larger the volume will expand after entering the red supergiant stage.
What’s more, the current observation technology of human beings is not so powerful. Stars that are too far away are either unobservable, or even if they are observed, it is difficult to understand the mass and volume more accurately. We must know that the current observable range of human beings is 93 billion light-years, and there are at least trillions of galaxies like the Milky Way in this range, and each galaxy has tens of millions of stars.
Therefore, the number of stars is a number that we cannot imagine. In this huge group of stars, there will always be some huge stars that exceed our estimates. It’s just that human beings’ scientific and technological strength is still relatively limited, and they have not yet been able to observe such huge stars, and what kind of stars still exist outside the observable range is even more unknown.