Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell

The Largest Star in the Universe – Size Comparison

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Supermassive stars usually stop growing around 150 solar masses when intense radiation blows away additional gas.
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Light takes 8.7 hours to circle Stephenson 2-18 once. An Earth aircraft would need roughly 500 years.
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Rho Cassiopeiae packs 40 Suns of mass into a star 500 Suns wide.
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Pistol Star contains 25 times the Sun’s mass but spans 300 times its radius.
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Gacrux is only 30% more massive than the Sun, yet has swollen to about 84 solar radii.
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A massive star can shed mass and shrink into a hotter hypergiant phase as it evolves.
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Hypergiants are expanded massive stars whose weak surface gravity lets powerful winds strip them apart.
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After core hydrogen runs out, a star can expand hundreds of thousands of times larger during a brief giant phase.
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Red dwarfs barely fuse hydrogen, so they stay small, cool, and dim instead of swelling after death.
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When a star exhausts core hydrogen, its core contracts and heats, forcing its outer layers to expand.
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Main-sequence stars shine by fusing hydrogen into helium inside cores hot and dense enough to ignite.
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Stephenson 2-18 is currently thought to be among the largest stars humans have found.

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