Earth to VY Canis Majoris: Another Look at the Size of Things

"Our small world

r4ycluster, YouTube (June 4, 2008)
video (1:04)

The person who made this video says that the scales aren't exact - and tells where the information came from. Kudos on both points.

Also, this is a pretty good demonstration of the size things in the little corner of the universe where we live. It starts with Earth, then adds other objects in the Solar System, and the larger stars around us.

Largest Known (as of now) Star: VY Canis Majoris

The last one is the largest star known, VY Canis Majoris, a whacking great star about 5,000 light years away, in the general direction of Sirius. It's just as well that VY Camis Majoris is so far away: When, or if, it becomes a supernova, we should be well outside its kill radius. (Just how big that is is hard to pin down. There's a plausible opinion on Yahoo! Answers that doesn't say where the writer got the information, or how.)

Minnesota Connection

There's a Minnesota connection to that big star: "...A team of astronomers led by Roberta Humphreys of the University of Minnesota used NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory to measure the motions of the ejected material and to map the distribution of the highly polarized dust, which reflects light at a specific orientation...." (Hubblesite)

More:

• "Research Topics / VY Canis Majoris"
  School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota (2008)
  (a bit on the technical side, with cool photos and graphics)
• "Astronomers Map a Hypergiant Star's Massive Outbursts"
  HubbleSite NewsCenter (January 8, 2007)
• "What is the Biggest Star in the Universe?"
  Universe Today (April 6, 2008)
  (Starts out with "My six-year old daughter is a question asking machine....")