Transcript 00-132 - StarsAreBig

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105 Intro Want to see something really big? Well watch this.

Our starting point is our own moon. We have seen men walk on the moon. It is pretty big.

But even the smallest planets are bigger.

Here are Mercury, Mars, Venus and Earth. The relative sizes with mercury set to one are : 1 : 1.34 : 2.41 : 2.54 :

And the gas giants in our solar system are huge in comparison.

Here are Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter.

… : 9.88 : 10.2 : 24 : 28.4 :

…and of course our sun makes even Jupiter seem small…

… : 277

But let’s look at some really big stars. Here is Sirius …and Pollux …and Arcturus …and Aldebaran …and Rigel …and Deneb …and Antares …and Betelgeuse

… and the largest star we currently know about is VY Canis Majoris.

Now these relative sizes use our own sun set to one : Sirius 1.75 Pollux 8 Arcturus 25 Aldebaran 43 Rigel 70 Deneb 220 Antares 510 Betelgeuse 1000 VY Canis Majoris 2100

On this scale, our sun would be one-tenth the size of the tiny little dot you see to the left.