User:Nussun05/The complete history of the largest known star recordholders

The very first time a star's radius other than our Sun has been estimated, was done in 1717 by Cassini. He estimated that Sirius has a diameter of 100 times that of our Sun, which he also stated was about the distance between the Earth and the Sun.

In 1920 Albert Michelson and Francis Pease perform the first measurement of a star's angular diameter besides our Sun. They estimated that Betelgeuse has an angular diameter of $0.047 "$, and together with a parallax estimate of $0.018 "$ they estimate that Betelgeuse has a diameter of about 2.4e8 mi or times that of our Sun.

In 1921 Henry Norris Russell performed a similar measurement but for Antares. He found that its angular diameter was $0.039 "$, which corresponds to 2.8e8 mi ( solar radii) at parallax $0.013 "$, and 4.3e8 mi ( solar radii) at parallax $0.009 "$. This value was larger than the revised diameter of Betelgeuse in the same paper, at 2.18e8 mi ( solar radii). It was calculated using the previous angular diameter of $0.047 "$, and a revised parallax of $0.02 "$.

In 1923 Sirius' diameter finally got reduced to a much more reasonable value of 1.03e6 mi or 1.191 solar radii. In the same paper, Betelgeuse and Antares also got revised values of 2.42e8 mi ( solar radii) and 3.82e8 mi ( solar radii) respectively. There were also several other new diameter estimates of stars in the paper, the remaining two largest ones being Rasalgethi with 1.858e8 mi ( solar radii), and Almach with 1.63e8 mi ( solar radii).

In 1928, Betelgeuse's and Antares' radii got revised yet again, this time the values were at $270$ and $450$ solar radii respectively.

In 1936 some other stars got their diameter calculated, the largest of them being Saclateni with a diameter of x.

In 1937 Sergei Gaposchkin published a paper which had two new candidates for the largest known star, being much larger than previous candidates. They were VV Cephei with a radius of $2,400$ solar radii, and Epsilon Aurigae B with a radius of $2,500$ solar radii.