The Relative Size of Planets and Stars - A Great Website

Thanks Roger!

How about this comparison?

Incredible!

That's amazing. I also find it amazing with my interest in astronomy that I've never bothered to ask the question "what is the largest known star?". Thankfully your picture led to my immediately looking up VY Canis Majoris which it turns out is the largest known star (radius, not mass). A Hypergiant. Here's some useful info from wikipedia:

VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa) is a red Hypergiant star located in the constellation Canis Major with a size of 2600 solar radii, it is the largest known star and also one of the most luminous known. It is located about 1.5 kiloparsecs (4.6×10¹⁶ km) or about 4,900 light years away from Earth. Unlike most stars, which occur in either binary or multiple star systems. VY CMa is a single star (i.e. does not have any stellar companions). It is categorized as a semiregular variable and has an estimated period of 6,275,081 days, or just under 17,200 years.

Probably the only reason we know about it is that it is "relatively" so close to us within the Milky Way.

The Milky Way is about 100,000 ly diameter and 2,000 ly "thick" probably only about 1,000 ly thick locally. So I guess if you modelled it as a 10" disk about 0.1" thick with lumpy bits you probably wouldn't be far wrong: then VY CMa would only be ½" away.

All the other "big" stars we know about would be closer than 0.1"

All the following are courtesy of Wikipedia:-

Antares is approximately 600 light-years (180 pc) from our solar system

Betelgeuse is a semiregular variable star located approximately 640 light-years from the Earth.

Aldebaran (α Tau, α Tauri, Alpha Tauri) is an orange giant star located about 65 light years away

Rigel is a blue supergiant star that is well beyond the current range of accurate parallax measurements; spectroscopic estimates place its distance between 700 and 900 light-years

Arcturus is 36.7 light years (11.3 parsecs) from Earth

Pollux, also catalogued as Beta Geminorum (β Gem / β Geminorum), is an orange giant star approximately 34 light-years from Earth

At a distance of 2.6 parsecs (8.6 ly), the Sirius system is one of our near neighbors

Great video!

Very timely post Roger. I was thinking about this topic the other day when talking to my children. A few years ago I received a power point presentation in an email with basically the same comparisons. I've saved (somewhere) to show my kids when they get a little bit older and can appreciate what they see.

Being a visual thinker, this is all truly amazing ... yes, like you said, Roger, none of this is a surprise, but to see it is great. THANKS!!!

If you say this

What about this ? isnot it supernatural !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Marvelous tidbits of comparison ! If a single picture does, indeed, speak a thousand words, then that single web-page speaks an entire volume. My wish for this holiday season would be that the sheer Joy experienced in seeing such evidence could be felt by one-and-all...

My response to such insight-ful clarification is much akin to my response to THIS blog-entry:

How Great is Our God !

Praying a "Blessed Christmas" for one and all~

Great video! My wife viewed the video as well and was equally blown away as I was, and Astronomy is one of my active hobbies and has been a great passion since childhood.

Now I feel very very small!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!