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Below are lists of the largest stars currently known, ordered by radius and separated into categories by galaxy. The unit of measurement used is the radius of the Sun (approximately 695,700 km; 432,300 mi). [1] The Sun, the orbit of Earth, Jupiter, and Neptune, compared to four stars (Pistol Star, Rho Cassiopeiae, Betelgeuse, and VY Canis Majoris)
A few notable large stars with masses less than 60 M ☉ are shown in the table below for the purpose of comparison, ending with the Sun, which is very close, but would otherwise be too small to be included in the list. At present, all the listed stars are naked-eye visible and relatively nearby.
KW Sagittarii is a red supergiant star, located approximately 2,420 parsecs (7,900 light-years) away from the Sun in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius.It is one of the largest known stars, with a diameter about 1,000 times larger than the Sun.
Alpha Centauri A, also known as Rigil Kentaurus, is the principal member, or primary, of the binary system. It is a solar-like main-sequence star with a similar yellowish colour, [97] whose stellar classification is spectral type G2-V; [3] it is about 10% more massive than the Sun, [90] with a radius about 22% larger. [98]
An artist’s illustration depicts the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, known as Sagittarius A*. It’s surrounded by a swirling accretion disk of hot gas and dust.
Although red supergiants are much cooler than the Sun, they are so much larger that they are highly luminous, typically tens or hundreds of thousands L ☉. [9] There is a theoretical upper limit to the radius of a red supergiant at around 1,500 R ☉. [9] In the Hayashi limit, stars above this radius would be too unstable and simply do not form.
Rigel and the IC 2118 nebula which it illuminates.. It was once believed that blue supergiants originated from a "feeding" with the interstellar medium when stars passed through interstellar dust clouds, [11] [8] although the current consensus is that blue supergiants are evolved high-mass stars, a natural consequence of stellar evolution, larger and more luminous than main-sequence stars.
Aldebaran is a red giant, meaning that it is cooler than the Sun with a surface temperature of 3,900 K, but its radius is about 45 times the Sun's, so it is over 400 times as luminous. As a giant star , it has moved off the main sequence on the Hertzsprung–Russell diagram after depleting its supply of hydrogen in the core .