Discover more mind-blowing science in our guides to the biggest objects in the Universe<\/a> and the weirdest stars in the Universe<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p> VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant star that can be seen in the constellation of Canis Major<\/a>, the Great Dog.<\/p> You can find out how to locate its position in our star chart above. As you can see, it takes a bit of precision star-hopping<\/a> to pinpoint its exact location.<\/p> How does its size compare to our own host star, the Sun?<\/p> You could fit at least 1,420 Suns across its face, making its total diameter close to 2 billion kilometres.<\/p> Some estimates put this hypergiant star at over 2,000 Suns across, or almost 3 billion kilometres wide.<\/p> Earth orbits a mere 150 million kilometres from the Sun, meaning VY Canis Majoris is at least 13 times wider than the Earth\u2013Sun distance.<\/p> It would take almost 3 billion Suns to fill up VY Canis Majoris.<\/p> Even Mercury<\/a>, the smallest planet, can only fit inside the Sun 21 million times. A supergiant star like Betelgeuse<\/a> would fit inside the hypergiant 8 times over.<\/p> However, that’s nothing compared to UY Scuti<\/a>, considered to be the biggest star in the Universe, which is so big you could fit about 5 billion Suns inside it!<\/p> Truly, when we get to this class of stellar hypergiants, the dimensions and physics involved are utterly mind-boggling.<\/p> These stars are so huge, we can even talk about their size in terms of the speed of light<\/a>!<\/p> Despite travelling at around 300,000 kilometres per second, it would take a beam of light as much as 6 hours to complete one journey around the circumference of VY Canis Majoris.<\/p> That\u2019s about the same amount of time it took for photos of Kuiper Belt Object<\/a> Arrokoth to travel back to Earth from NASA\u2019s New Horizons probe<\/a>.<\/p> This guide originally appeared in the May 2023 issue of <\/strong><\/em>BBC Sky at Night Magazine<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n Just how big is VY Canis Majoris and how does its size compare to that of the Sun and planet Earth? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":57031,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2024\/04\/vy-canis-majoris-one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-is-so-huge-you-could-fit-3-billion-suns-inside-it.jpg",1200,675,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2024\/04\/vy-canis-majoris-one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-is-so-huge-you-could-fit-3-billion-suns-inside-it-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2024\/04\/vy-canis-majoris-one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-is-so-huge-you-could-fit-3-billion-suns-inside-it-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2024\/04\/vy-canis-majoris-one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-is-so-huge-you-could-fit-3-billion-suns-inside-it-768x432.jpg",768,432,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2024\/04\/vy-canis-majoris-one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-is-so-huge-you-could-fit-3-billion-suns-inside-it-1024x576.jpg",800,450,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2024\/04\/vy-canis-majoris-one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-is-so-huge-you-could-fit-3-billion-suns-inside-it.jpg",1200,675,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/77\/2024\/04\/vy-canis-majoris-one-of-the-biggest-stars-in-the-universe-is-so-huge-you-could-fit-3-billion-suns-inside-it.jpg",1200,675,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"Just how big is VY Canis Majoris and how does its size compare to that of the Sun and planet Earth?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/57030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/57031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcskyatnight\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Illustration](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2023\/04\/vy-canis-majoris-vs-solar-system-29a2645.jpg\" "\\"\\"\/")
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