User:Nussun05/Updated list of largest stars

Star-sizes.jpg in the Solar System and several well-known stars: 1. Mercury < Mars < Venus < Earth

2. Earth < Neptune < Uranus < Saturn < Jupiter

3. Jupiter < Wolf 359 < Sun < Sirius A

4. Sirius A < Pollux < Arcturus < Aldebaran

5. Aldebaran < Rigel A < Antares A < Betelgeuse

6. Betelgeuse < Mu Cephei < VV Cephei A < VY Canis Majoris ]] Below is a list of the largest stars currently known, ordered by radius. The unit of measurement used is the radius of the Sun (approximately 1 solar radius).

The angular diameters of stars can be measured directly using stellar interferometry. Other methods can use lunar occultations or from eclipsing binaries, which can be used to test indirect methods of finding stellar radii. Only a few useful supergiant stars can be occulted by the Moon, including Antares A (Alpha Scorpii A). Examples of eclipsing binaries are Epsilon Aurigae (Almaaz), VV Cephei, and V766 Centauri (HR 5171). Angular diameter measurements can be inconsistent because the boundary of the very tenuous atmosphere (opacity) differs depending on the wavelength of light in which the star is observed.

Uncertainties remain with the membership and order of the list, especially when deriving various parameters used in calculations, such as stellar luminosity and effective temperature. Often stellar radii can only be expressed as an average or be within a large range of values. Values for stellar radii vary significantly in different sources and for different observation methods.

All the sizes stated on this last have various inaccuracies and all of them may be disputed. This list is still a work in progress and various parameters are extremely disputed.

Caveats


Various issues exist in determining accurate radii of the largest stars, which in many cases do display significant errors. The following lists are generally based on various considerations or assumptions; these include:
 * Stellar radii or diameters are usually derived only approximately using Stefan-Boltzmann law for the deduced stellar luminosity and effective surface temperature.
 * Stellar distances, and their errors, for most stars, remain uncertain or poorly determined.
 * Many supergiant stars have extended atmospheres, and many are within opaque dust shells, making their true effective temperatures and surfaces highly uncertain.
 * Many extended supergiant atmospheres also significantly change in size over time, regularly or irregularly pulsating over several months or years as variable stars. This makes adopted luminosities poorly known and may significantly change the quoted radii.
 * Other direct methods for determining stellar radii rely on lunar occultations or from eclipses in binary systems. This is only possible for a very small number of stars.
 * In this list are some examples of extremely distant extragalactic stars, which may have slightly different properties and natures than the currently largest-known stars in the Milky Way. For example, some red supergiants in the Magellanic Clouds are suspected to have slightly different limiting temperatures and luminosities. Such stars may exceed accepted limits by undergoing large eruptions or changing their spectral types over just a few months (or potentially years).