Planet >> Stars size comparison

[Screwdriverone]

Hi All,

Stumbled across this You Tube video of some scale comparisons of objects in our local solar system all the way up to W Cephei. Astounding the differences in size!

Take a look here (http://video.google.com.au/videoplay?docid=-3974466981713172831&hl=en).

Chris

[Zuts]

I hope the W Cephiates have discovered sun block :)

Paul

[danielsun]

:lol: yeah, they really wouldn't want to use anything less than 30+

Though an Incredible video on just how big our universe and everything in it is.
Amazing how us as such tiny organisms on a tiny planet can see and study things so far away.
The distances and sizes are truly mind boggling .

[Zuts]

Hi,

That sun is f***ing big. If you plonk it in our solar system it would take up all the space up to nearly the orbit of saturn :scared:

Maybe add a few zero's to the 30+ :)

Paul

[skwinty]

Here's some pix showing the different planets and stars together:eyepop:

[renormalised]

Couple of things wrong with those stars size comparisons. The Sun is quite a bit larger in relation to Sirius than what you see there. That white ball is 3 or so times larger than the orange ball that's the Sun. Sirius' actual diameter is 1.8 times the Sun's. The Earth/Mars comparison would be a closer fit in relation to the two stars (Mars is 53% of the Earth's diameter...actually a little smaller than Sirius/Sun = 55%). Now, if you said it was Vega, I'd say "yes". And, Rigel is a lot bigger than Aldebaran (70 v 40 solar radii). Pollux and Arcturus should be larger (10 and 30 solar radii, respectively) than shown, if you keep Sirius that size....(reduce it to proper size and they're both right). I'd also question the Betelgeuse/Antares comparison....although their actual sizes are uncertain anyway, given the nature of the two stars. I'll do a couple of quick calc's and get back on those two:)

[erick]

Is the jury still out on whether VV Cephei A or VY Canis Majoris is the largest star that has been observed?

Looks like Wikipedia has "VY" in the lead!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_stars

I still gotta find these fellas and have a look at them!

[renormalised]

I believe they're all voting for VY....but you never know, they may change their minds:)

[Mr. Subatomic]

It just kept going!

[Matty P]

That is extremely difficult to comprehend.

:eyepop: :scared:

[renormalised]

Not really, it's just a simple matter of size comparisons. You just need to be able to see in your mind the relationship between size and the type of object you're looking at.

Look at it this way, if the Sun was the size of a pinhead (about 1mm), VY Canis Majoris would be a ball about 2.1 metres across. Neptune would be a point 0.03mm in size orbiting 1.2 metres away from the star....at the scale I suggested.

[snas]

So if VY Canis Majoris is 2 000 x the diameter of the Sun; and given the formula for the volume of a sphere (and for the mathematics here we're assuming that of of these stars is a perfect sphere) = 4 pi r^3, that gives this star a volume of 8 billion x that of the Sun! Whoa!
That's the good thing about astronomy, awesomely ridiculous numbers.
Stuart

[renormalised]

:):):):)

[Suzy_A]

Frank Sinatra thought he was a pretty big star when he came to Australia. He must of been as he thought the sun shone out of his Uranus!:lol:

[renormalised]

Wasn't that where he sang out of??.....:P:P:D:D

[Suzy_A]

Hi Reno,

thanks for your msg the other day.

Sorry to contradict you again, but despite everything else, ol' Frank was actually a very good singer - he could make even the crappiest song sound good. Although this doesn't necessarily mean he didn't sing out of it!

[renormalised]

That's what I meant:P:D

However, he thought the Sun shone out his own:P

He wasn't the nicest of guys. His ego was bigger than CY Canis Majoris.