This time-lapse video captures one frame every 8 hours starting when data became available in June 2010 and finishing February 8, 2015. The different colors represent the various wavelengths (sometimes blended, sometimes alone) in which SDO observes the sun.
If one pixel is the sun, VY Canis Majoris has a diameter of about 720 pixels. That's 720 suns lined up side by side and you get from one side of VY Canis Majoris to the other.
But to fill up the whole star? You'd need almost 10 billion suns.
That is absolutely Beautiful.... looks so sureal, although reminds me of a cgi atheistic for some reason, although that is probably because its "different".
If one pixel is the sun, VY Canis Majoris has a diameter of about 720 pixels. That's 720 suns lined up side by side and you get from one side of VY Canis Majoris to the other.
But to fill up the whole star? You'd need almost 10 billion suns.
One thing I feel this kind of volume comparison does is that it doesn't necessarily represent magnitudes as they are. take for example VY Canis Majoris which is often the last star shown in these comparisons making the Sun look tiny in comparison, but, while that star has a radius 1600 times larger than the sun, it only has something between 20 to 40 times the mass of the sun (so it is more massive yes, but not at the same order of magnitude, from wiki:
Wikipedia said:
VY Canis Majoris also illustrates the conceptual problem of defining the "surface" (and radius) of very large stars. With an average density of 0.000005 to 0.000010 kg/m3, the star is a hundred thousand times less dense than the atmosphere of the Earth (air) at sea level.
The most massive star we know of R136a1 which is only 265 times more massive than The Sun, still very big, but the order of magnitude/scale doesn't seem as big as when they do those visual comparisions.
The most massive star we know of R136a1 which is only 265 times more massive than The Sun, still very big, but the order of magnitude/scale doesn't seem as big as when they do those visual comparisions.