Hello everyone! Please read the descriptions.
Okay, everyone has seen this picture. The solarystem, and all of its large planetary bodies, set up next to eachother in scale, with the Red Arrow pointing to Earth.. But how large is the Sun really, when set up right next to Earth? And how large is the largest known star? Let's look.
Using Universe Simulator 2, I decided to show you guys the sheer scale of the giants in the universe. Note that the software may not be 100% scientifically accurate, allthough it does feature accurate sizes of planets and stars. Here, I put the Earth right next to the Sun.
Okay, the Sun is pretty big. We knew that already. But how big is it compared to one of the leading canditates of being the largest known star? Let's have a look at UY Scuti.
UY Scuti.
So I put the Sun directly next to UY Scuti, and immediately, you can see the Sun being dwarfed, not much unlike the Earth next to the Sun. Mind boggling.
Can you see the Sun?
Insane.
The Earth's sky if UY Scuti was our sun.
For my next visualization, I put Earth at a distance of about 1 AU from UY Scuti. 1 AU would be the distance that Earth is from the Sun, on average. Meaning, I replaced the Sun with UY Scuti and orbitted the Earth around it. This would be our view of the sky.
Looking to the left, out from the horizon. This is from the surface of Earth by the way.
Looking up.
And then, I put UY Scuti in our solar system, replacing the Sun with the giant. It immediately swallows planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter, including all of their orbits. Only Saturn, Uranus, Neptunus and Pluto survive the slaughter, though Saturn is nearly swallowed, too.
This would be Saturns new view. Saturns average distance from the sun is about 1,433,449,370 km. That's 891 million miles, or 9.6 AU. This far away, the sun is nothing but a speck in the sky, but UY Scuti swallows its entire view.
[FONT=&]Insane? I think so.
[/FONT]
