• Question: what is the biggest and smallest star

    Asked by to Andrew, Ash, Gem, Paige, SJ on 29 Jun 2012. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Paige Brown

      Paige Brown answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      The biggest and smallest star…

      Well, we can only say the biggest and smallest stars that we know of, because there are probably some stars we haven’t discovered yet that are bigger or smaller!

      “The biggest stars in the Universe are the monster red hypergiants, measuring up to 1,500 times the size of the Sun.”

      Here is a list of the largest known stars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_known_stars

      VY Canis Majoris is 1,200–2,200 times bigger than our sun! Once thought to be a star so large that it contradicted stellar evolutionary theory, improved measurements have brought it down to size.[2]

      VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa) is the largest known star and also one of the most luminous. It is a red hypergiant in the constellation Canis Major. You can see that constellation in the night sky! That constellation has very many bright stars. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/be/Canis_Major_IAU.svg)

      Our own sun is actually pretty small!

      “The smallest stars around are the tiny red dwarfs. These are stars with 50% the mass of the Sun and smaller. In fact, the least massive red dwarf has 7.5% the mass of the Sun. Even at this smallest size, a star has the temperature and pressures in its core so that nuclear fusion reactions can take place.”

      “The smallest known star right now is OGLE-TR-122b, a red dwarf star that’s part of a binary stellar system. This red dwarf the smallest star to ever have its radius accurately measured; 0.12 solar radii. This works out to be 167,000 km. That’s only 20% larger than Jupiter. You might be surprised to know that OGLE-TR-122b has 100 times the mass of Jupiter, but it’s only a little larger.

      And that is the smallest known star. But there are certainly smaller stars out there. The smallest theoretical mass for a star to support nuclear fusion is 0.07 or 0.08 solar masses, so smaller stars are out there.”

      Read more: http://www.universetoday.com/25348/what-is-the-smallest-star/#ixzz1zCs9uqgx

    • Photo: SarahJayne Boulton

      SarahJayne Boulton answered on 29 Jun 2012:

      Paige has clearly done here homework and listed the largest and smallest stars we’re able to currently measure! There’s nothing else to really add!

      There’s also the possiblity that there are larger and smaller stars out there, just we can’t measure them as we can’t see their light yet!! They could be too far away

    • Photo: Gemma Staite

      Gemma Staite answered on 1 Jul 2012:

      Well answered by Paige and I learned something there too

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