EV Carinae

EV Carinae is a red supergiant and pulsating variable star of spectral type M4Ia in the constellation Carina. It is a semiregular variable star with its apparent magnitude varying between 7.4 and 9.0 in the visible band, making it only seen by binoculars or a telescope. Various periods have been identified, but the dominant one is around 347 days. It is an MK spectral standard star for the class M4.5Ia.

EV Car is one of the largest known stars although its calculated properties depend on the distance used in the calculations. In the 1980s, based on an assumed distance of 4.2 kpc, EV Carinae was found to be an extremely luminous and large supergiant star with an luminosity between 550,000 and 675,000 times that of the Sun, which would imply radii of 2,880 to 3,190 times the Sun's radius at a temperature of 2,930 K, making it larger than the orbit of Saturn.

More recently, new calculations of the distance derived closer distances below 3 kpc which would put EV Car part of the Carina OB2 association along the Carina Nebula and give the star lower luminosities below, higher temperatures, and correspondingly lower radius values,  while calculation of the bolometric luminosity based on a Gaia Data Release 2 parallax of $2,960$ gives a luminosity below  with a corresponding radius of , but that value is considered unreliable due to a very high level of astrometric noise.