Until recently, UY Scuti was considered the most giant star known to humanity. Compared to our Sun, it makes our luminary look like a tiny, barely noticeable dot against the backdrop of UY Scuti, but there exists a star larger than UY Scuti. In today’s article, we will talk about the most giant known star in the Universe to humanity.
What stars are the largest in the Universe?
Red supergiants are some of the largest stars (by volume) in the Universe. Stars are not born as red giants; they become one, as this is the final stage in the evolution of most stars. Due to their massive mass, they have a short lifespan for stars — ranging from 30 million to several hundred million years. Red giants are most often found in open star clusters, the arms of spiral galaxies, and irregular galaxies.
Supergiants form when massive main sequence stars exhaust all hydrogen reserves in their core. Then they begin to expand, like stars with smaller masses, but unlike them, future supergiants start burning helium in the core almost immediately. Thus, they move almost horizontally across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, becoming red supergiants.
