VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa) is the largest known star and also one of the most luminous. Located in the constellation Canis Major, it is a red hypergiant, between 1800 and 2100 solar radii, 8.4–9.8 astronomical units in radius, about 3.0 billion km or 1.9 billion miles in diameter, and about 1.5 kiloparsecs (4,900 light years, 4.6×1016 km or 2.9×1016 mi) distant from Earth. Unlike most hypergiant stars, which occur in either binary or multiple star systems, VY CMa is a single star. It is categorized as a semiregular variable and has an estimated period of 2,000 days. It has an average density of 0.000005 to 0.000010 kg/m3.
Placed at the center of our solar system, VY Canis Majoris’s surface would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn, although the astrophysicists Philip Massey, Emily Levesque and Bertrand Plez disagree about the star’s stated radius, suggesting it is smaller: merely 600 times the size of the Sun, extending past the orbit of Mars.
Placed at the center of our solar system, VY Canis Majoris’s surface would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn, although the astrophysicists Philip Massey, Emily Levesque and Bertrand Plez disagree about the star’s stated radius, suggesting it is smaller: merely 600 times the size of the Sun, extending past the orbit of Mars.
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