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UY Scuti

From Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

UY Scuti is a red supergiant (RSG) or red hypergiant star. It is a pulsating variable star in the constellation Scutum and one of the largest known stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. It is also one of the most luminous and well-known of its kind.[1][2]

The bright star in the centre of the picture is UY Scuti.

The star has an estimated average median radius of 909 times that of the Sun, or a diameter of 1.26 trillion m (2 billion mi; 8.45 AU); thus a volume 750 million times that of the Sun.[3]

It is at a distance of about 1,800 parsecs (5,870 light years) from Earth.[4] If placed at the center of the Solar system, its photosphere would engulf the inner planets of the Solar System (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars), and would engulf all asteroids as well. Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune would not be engulfed.

References[change | change source]

  1. International Variable Star Index. "Detail for UY Sct". [1]
  2. Arroyo-Torres B. et al 2013. The atmospheric structure and fundamental parameters of the red supergiants AH Scorpii, UY Scuti, and KW Sagittarii. Astronomy & Astrophysics 554: A76. [2]
  3. Healy, Sarah; Horiuchi, Shunsaku; Molla, Marta Colomer; Milisavljevic, Dan; Tseng, Jeff; Bergin, Faith; Weil, Kathryn; Tanaka, Masaomi (2024-03-23). "Red Supergiant Candidates for Multimessenger Monitoring of the Next Galactic Supernova". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 529 (4): 3630–3650. doi:10.1093/mnras/stae738. ISSN 0035-8711.
  4. Bailer-Jones, C. A. L.; Rybizki, J.; Fouesneau, M.; Demleitner, M.; Andrae, R. (2021). "Estimating Distances from Parallaxes. V. Geometric and Photogeometric Distances to 1.47 Billion Stars in Gaia Early Data Release 3". The Astronomical Journal. 161 (3): 147. arXiv:2012.05220. Bibcode:2021AJ....161..147B. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/abd806. S2CID 228063812. Data about this star can be seen here.