The Largest known star comparison

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[ARCHIVED THREAD] - The Largest known star comparison

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:15:35 AM EDT

check this out. Give it a second to start running through its a .gif

I think that this is amazing and really puts things into perspective.

www.accessmetropolis.com/images/largest-know-star.gif

if somebody knows how to post it on this page please do, its running on my server anyhow.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:17:20 AM EDT

[#1]

~~don't see squat~~ Now it's there. Definitely makes you see how small we really are.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:18:05 AM EDT

[#2]

nope nothing hear..

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:21:34 AM EDT

[#3]

wow, that is kinda big

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:21:58 AM EDT

[#4]

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:22:52 AM EDT

[#5]

cool.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:28:14 AM EDT

[#6]

Quoted:
cool.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:33:22 AM EDT

[#7]

It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:34:53 AM EDT

[#8]

That VY Canis Majoris looks capable of heating the entire damn Milky Way!

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:36:01 AM EDT

[#9]

Rosie O'Donnell's ass is larger than ANY of those.

And I've seen the slideshow that proves it.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:37:18 AM EDT

[#10]

That's pretty damn amazing.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:39:07 AM EDT

[#11]

I've been looking around, and even though those stars have ~billion times the volume of the sun, their masses are only about 10-100 times the sun.

They just found the largest black hole ever a week or two ago, at about 18 Billion times the mass of the sun

http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn13166-biggest-black-hole-in-the-cosmos-discovered.html

"The black hole is about six times as massive as the previous record holder and in fact weighs as much as a small galaxy. It lurks 3.5 billion light years away, and forms the heart of a quasar called OJ287. A quasar is an extremely bright object in which matter spiralling into a giant black hole emits copious amounts of radiation."

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:40:59 AM EDT

[#12]

Cool vid. thanks for posting.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:43:51 AM EDT

[#13]

That's pretty cool.

I was looking at a picture of a nebula or something the otherday. And then I looked in the background. I could easily spot about 15 other GALAXIES there.

The universe really is big. Almost...infinite one would say.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:44:58 AM EDT

[#14]

Like I didn't feel small enough already! Thanks dude!

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:48:35 AM EDT

[#15]

Quoted:
That VY Canis Majoris looks capable of heating the entire damn Milky Way!

If I recall correctly larger stars are less dense, overall, meaning they are cooler and they live longer. But it would mean that they do not put off a lot of heat.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:50:09 AM EDT

[#16]

Very interesting.

Thanks for posting it.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:57:13 AM EDT

[#17]

Canus Majoris is a BIG ball of gas..........kinda like ALgore.

Posted: 1/20/2008 11:58:35 AM EDT

[#18]

Sure brings some perspective as to how important the primaries are.

Posted: 1/20/2008 12:13:05 PM EDT

[#19]

Awesome.

Reminds me of this map that came in a national geographic in the 80s. It basically went from our planet to the universe and our position in it. Along the way were star clusters to get to our galaxy, and how it is just part of our local galaxy cluster and on and on to the edges of the known universe.

I tried to explain it to my mom (Im about 10 at the time) and it blew her mind.

Posted: 1/20/2008 12:28:31 PM EDT

[#20]

Here's one for you....

The setup (so you can grasp how far the sun is from the earth)

If you assume the sun is 12 inches across-

The earth is 106 feet away

Now if you assume the distance between the earth and sun is only as thick as a sheet of paper:

the nearest star (other than the sun) is 71 feet away.

The diameter of the Milky Way would be 310 miles.

The Andromeda galaxy is 6000 miles away

The edge of the known universe is 31 million miles away.

Posted: 1/20/2008 12:35:42 PM EDT

[#21]

Very cool graphic

Posted: 1/20/2008 12:40:11 PM EDT

[#22]

Posted: 1/20/2008 12:53:05 PM EDT

[#23]

When I think of how big the universe is, I think of two things:

1. There is a high probably of life out there.
2. No god made the entire universe just to have some beings on one minuscule planet gaze up at it.

Not trying to start an alien/religious thread, however. ;)

Posted: 1/20/2008 12:57:26 PM EDT

[#24]

Wow

Imagine VY Canis Majoris being an inhabitable planet similar to earth, take forever to explore the surface.

Posted: 1/20/2008 12:58:35 PM EDT

[#25]

Quoted:
Wow

Imagine VY Canis Majoris being an inhabitable planet similar to earth, take forever to explore the surface.

The gravity of a planet that massive would be a bitch.

Posted: 1/20/2008 12:59:03 PM EDT

[#26]

Quoted:
Wow

Imagine VY Canis Majoris being an inhabitable planet similar to earth, take forever to explore the surface.

yeah but everyone would weigh as much as Rosie ODonnell and have calves like the Hildabeast

Posted: 1/20/2008 1:04:11 PM EDT

[#27]

Cool animation.

That's one big honkin' star!

Posted: 1/20/2008 1:05:43 PM EDT

[#28]

Quoted:

Quoted:
Wow

Imagine VY Canis Majoris being an inhabitable planet similar to earth, take forever to explore the surface.

The gravity of a planet that massive would be a bitch.

The bitch would be to find a Sun to light it up

Posted: 1/20/2008 1:06:03 PM EDT

[#29]

thanks for posting, i love learning about that sort of stuff.

Posted: 1/20/2008 1:14:59 PM EDT

[#30]

very cool

Posted: 1/20/2008 1:22:39 PM EDT

[#31]

thats pretty cool,

Do the colors that are depicted accurate. Do these massive stars really look so cool.

Posted: 1/20/2008 1:26:44 PM EDT

[#32]

Those are mostly speculations about what the star might look like.

Color wise, we can't even be sure of what some would look like if you were close enough
to see them because some of them are obscured by clouds of gas and dust.

But yes, some are quite colorful. Sirius, for example, IS blue-white. Antares is red.

Want to see star colors? Take your camera outside on a clear, moonless night, set it up for the darkest possible conditions, slightly defocus the lens, and take the longest exposure
you possibly can. This will better show the colors of various stars.

CJ

[ARCHIVED THREAD] - The Largest known star comparison

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