Stephenson 2-18: The Largest Star Ever Discovered (Size Comparison)

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The universe has produced some truly massive stars, such as the mighty UY Scuti. This ginormous ball of glowing plasma is classified as a red supergiant star. It was once considered the largest star to be ever discovered.

Located in the constellation Scutum, UY Scuti was originally estimated to be 1700 times larger than the Sun. For many years, it was believed to be the largest star in the known universe.

However, now UY Scuti, doesn’t even make it into the top 10 list. The reason for this sudden downgrade, is because it is actually a lot closer to Earth, than originally estimated.

More recent and accurate measurements have found that UY Scuti is more likely to be 775 times, the size of our Sun. Still making it a gigantic star, but nowhere near as big as many others, that have already been discovered.

So which is the largest known star in the universe. Well, that title currently belongs to Stephenson 2-18. Stephenson 2-18 is truly enormous, with an estimated radius of 2150 times, the size of our Sun.

In fact, if we could replace the Sun, with this colossal star, then it would easily engulf the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, which is on average, 1.4 billion kilometers away.
The enormous star is a part of a relatively small cluster, called Stephenson 2. This cluster is located around 20 thousand light-years away.

The cluster also contains 26 other confirmed red supergiant's stars, which is far more than any other known cluster in the universe.

This newly titled “largest star” is also very young, around 14-20 million years old. according to the current understanding of stellar evolution, Stephenson may even continue to grow bigger, possibly one day becoming, what is known as a yellow hyper-giant star.

Credit: NASA/ESA

Видео Stephenson 2-18: The Largest Star Ever Discovered (Size Comparison) канала Astro Bytes