When the stellar pair ventured too close, the black hole captured the companion star, releasing S5-HSV1 from its binary dance and flinging it through space. Quite a fall from grace. Receive news, sky-event information, observing tips, and more from Astronomy's weekly email newsletter. View our Privacy Policy. By signing up you may also receive reader surveys and occasional special offers. We do not sell, rent or trade our email lists. Login or Register Customer Service. RISE —. PHASE —.
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The cosmos is full of objects that defy expectations. The Sun is a pretty boring star. Still burning through the hydrogen in its core, our middle-aged Sun is comfortable at its current, relatively petite size. And though it will stay this way for about 5 billion years more, our star will eventually run low on hydrogen and switch to fusing helium deep within.
This will inflate the Sun into a red giant over the span of just a couple of hundred million years. After engulfing the innermost planets, possibly including Earth, the Sun will continually shed its outer layers, eventually leaving behind a smoldering white dwarf surrounded by a beautiful planetary nebula of glowing gas. But just like people, some stars have wildly different experiences. The biggest: UY Scuti Just like in the DC Universe, sometimes the clearest way for astronomers to express something is truly extraordinary is to add the prefix super.
In fact, there are as many as 30 stars whose radii fit within UY Scuti's smallest estimated size, so it shouldn't sit too securely on its throne. Nor does UY Scuti's large radius make it the most massive star. That honor goes to Ra1, which weighs in at about times the mass of the sun but only about 30 solar radii. UY Scuti, in comparison, is only about 30 times more massive than the sun.
So which star would take UY Scuti's place if it weren't exactly 1, solar radii? Here are a few of the stars that might dominate:. Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community space. Nola Taylor Tillman is a contributing writer for Space.
The approximate size of the star is about m miles, or nearly eight astronomical units, where one astronomical unit is the distance between the earth and the sun. This is large enough that it would extend past Jupiter.
The complication with stars is that they have diffuse edges. The photosphere is where the star becomes transparent to light, and where photons — that is, light particles — can escape. As far as an astrophysicist is concerned, this is the surface of the star, as this is the point at which photons can leave the star.
Going any further towards the centre of star would mean photons caught in a series of bounces, and unable to stream freely.
To be clear, the photosphere is not where the gas of the star ends — stars also have atmospheres, which are transparent to light, and which extend beyond the photosphere.
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