The largest star in our galaxy is VY Canis Majoris. This red hypergiant is among the largest known stars in our galaxy. It has an estimated radius between 1,800 and 2,100 times the radius of the Sun. At this size it would reach nearly to the orbit of Saturn if placed in our solar system. VY Canis Majoris is located roughly 3,900 light-years from Earth in the direction of the constellation Canis Majoris. The largest star in the Universe is UY Scuti: While there are stars that are brighter and denser than UY Scuti, it has the largest overall size of any star currently known. It's radius is somewhere between 1,054,378,000 (billion) and 1,321,450,000 (billion) miles in size, which is about 1,700 times larger than our Sun’s radius and 21 billion times the volume. Wrapping one’s head around such number can be difficult, so let’s break this down a bit. Our enormous, distant friend, UY Scuti, would be 125,000 feet in diameter, which is just a smidge under 24 miles. Remember that crazy Redbull-sponsored stunt a few years ago performed by Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from the outermost limit of Earth’s atmosphere back to the surface? That was 24 miles in the air. Now imagine a sphere that large. That’s how big UY Scuti is. The star is ginormous and if placed where our sun is would scarf down all the rocky planets, possibly Jupiter and have Saturn for dessert, all without a burp! So, what happens to super-hyper-massive red giant stars? They explode! This is needless to say, a super disruption of space and time. What happens after the explosion? Two things may happen: the supernova creates a black hole or a neutron star. A black hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not get out. The gravity is so strong because matter has been squeezed into a tiny space. Because no light can get out, people can't see black holes. They are invisible. Space telescopes with special tools can help find black holes. The special tools can see how stars that are very close to black holes act differently than other stars. Black holes do not go around in space eating stars, moons and planets. Earth will not fall into a black hole because no black hole is close enough to our solar system for Earth to do that. Even if a black hole the same mass as the sun were to take the place of the sun, Earth still would not fall in. The black hole would have the same gravity as our sun. Earth and the other planets would orbit the black hole as they orbit the sun now. Our sun will never turn into a black hole. The sun is not a big enough star to make a black hole. This is an artists rendering of a black hole eating a star. This is possible, but not for us. The other path a supernova may take is the neutron star. Neutron stars are city-size stellar objects with a mass about 1.4 times that of the sun. Born from the explosive death of another, larger stars, these tiny objects pack quite a punch. When stars four to eight times as massive as the sun explode in a violent supernova, their outer layers can blow off in an often-spectacular display, leaving behind a small, dense core that continues to collapse. Gravity presses the material in on itself so tightly that protons and electrons combine to make neutrons, yielding the name "neutron star." Neutron stars pack their mass inside a 12.4 miles diameter. They are so dense that a single teaspoon would weigh a billion tons — assuming you somehow managed to snag a sample without being captured by the body's strong gravitational pull. Some neutron stars have jets of materials streaming out of them at nearly the speed of light. As these beams stream past Earth, they flash like the bulb of a lighthouse. This pulsing appearance led them to be called pulsars. Neutron stars don't seem too dangerous, they look pretty spinning about and pulsing light....well, think again! In October of 2017 a ground breaking scientific phenomenon was discovered when two neutron stars collided. An illustration of a “kilonova,” a hot, dense expanding cloud of debris produced by the collision of two neutron stars. Such collisions are thought to produce much of the universe's gold, platinum and other elements heavier than iron. But they can also have catastrophic consequences for any nearby habitable planets. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, CI Lab After billions of years spent slowly circling each other, in their last moments these two stars spiraled around each other thousands of times before finally smashing together at a fraction of light-speed, likely creating a black hole. The crash was so violent it shook the universe, emitting some 200 million suns’ worth of energy as vibrations in the fabric of space time called "gravitational waves". Those waves traveled out from the collision like ripples on a pond, eventually washing over Earth—and into our planet’s premiere gravitational-wave detectors, the U.S.-built LIGO and European-built Virgo observatories. From this pure catastrophe scientists discovered that space is like a medium, (like water, fabric, matter) when explosions occur waves can pass across space and time. I'm a little bit scared of the neutron stars...I'm kind of glad I live near a massive black hole...Sagittarius A. Well! Sleep tight tonight!
12 Comments
olivia brown
11/17/2017 08:15:42 pm
FIRST COMMENTER
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Allysa Bullock
11/17/2017 09:27:37 pm
Good job on the blog today Mrs. Taylor! I love the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th pictures they are so cool.Today I came home and guess what I did ........... CLEAN when all I wanted to do was sleep SLEEP that's all I wanted to do was sleep and sleep until it was dinner time then I would wake up then eat then sleep some dinner then sleep some more but WHY UNIVERSE WHY. First my day starts out I freeze my legs off trying to get TO school then I get to school and brush my hair then I go outside and it's raining so that just ruined the hair that I just brushed. Ok BYE PEOPLE!!!
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elephant
11/18/2017 09:47:28 am
cool mrs tatlor. i dont think i will sleep tonight. yeah i know its day but i couldnt comment yesterday. so i hope you dont lose your voice again. have a great weekend.
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elephant
11/19/2017 05:56:13 pm
sorry that was supposed to be longer. but i didnt have enough tine. bye!!!! have a good week/weekend!!!!!
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aidan
11/18/2017 03:24:56 pm
black holes freak me out : (
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elephant
11/19/2017 06:01:22 pm
yay. im number 3,5,and 6. [ i should be 3,4,and 6 because my reply just went straight under my comment] bye!!!!! have a great week/weekend/thanksgiving break/thanksgiving!!!!! yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!
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Poop
11/19/2017 06:06:07 pm
Poop 💩
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Allysa Bullock
11/20/2017 06:46:14 am
Guess what everybody for some random reason I just took pics of my room which is a horrible disaster that I cannot even explain! Well I guess everybody has something weird that they do bye 👋 y’all!!👋🤔🤔😐
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Sadie
11/20/2017 07:17:12 am
Good job on the blog Mrs. Taylor! The pictures are wonderful!
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gandalf
11/20/2017 07:34:10 am
good job on the blog today
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Ema Martinez
11/20/2017 09:35:28 pm
I remember learning about this! I think I still know what the formations are! I hope your voice gets better Mrs. Taylor! Have a nice Thanksgiving too.
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Mrs. TaylorI love science! Everything about the world is interesting and never boring. I love to study plants, animals, insects, and people. My favorite subjects are my students who are the most unique organisms on the planet! Categories |