Comments on: How big is the biggest star? http://smritiweb.com/navin/general/how-big-is-the-biggest-star Navin Kabra's blog Wed, 04 Aug 2010 12:23:00 -0500 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.6 hourly 1 By: Venkat http://smritiweb.com/navin/general/how-big-is-the-biggest-star/comment-page-1#comment-1444 Venkat Wed, 20 Feb 2008 14:27:12 +0000 http://smritiweb.com/navin/general/how-big-is-the-biggest-star#comment-1444 Awesome. I've seen up to Betelgeuse myself (all the ones up to that are bright, well-known stars in prominent constellations). The ones beyond are new to me. AFAIK, these super massive ones are red supergiants. When a middle-aged, medium-sized star like our Sun (above the Chandrashekhar limit) grows older and starts to run out of gas, it gets unstable and grows (forgot the exact mechanism). The sun is supposed to grow up to the orbit of Mars (which would make it betelgeuse size I guess). It might then collapase and explode into a supernova. So that's my lecture for the day. Awesome. I’ve seen up to Betelgeuse myself (all the ones up to that are bright, well-known stars in prominent constellations). The ones beyond are new to me. AFAIK, these super massive ones are red supergiants. When a middle-aged, medium-sized star like our Sun (above the Chandrashekhar limit) grows older and starts to run out of gas, it gets unstable and grows (forgot the exact mechanism). The sun is supposed to grow up to the orbit of Mars (which would make it betelgeuse size I guess). It might then collapase and explode into a supernova.

So that’s my lecture for the day.

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