Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 4

SPECTRUM by Peter Tyson
Our Puny Star
THERE'S A PHRASE in our cover story this month that made me
snicker: " . . . our Sun is tiny . . . " Anyone reading that phrase might
have the same reaction. The Sun is 1.4 million km (870,000 mi)
across, wide enough that it would take 109 Earths lined up side
by side to span the sphere. Our star's mass totals about 330,000
Earths, and to fill the Sun's volume would require a whopping 1.3 million
Earths. How can such a behemoth be considered tiny?
Of course, I took that phrase out of context. The full sentence is: " Yet our
Sun is tiny next to other stars within our galaxy. " Betelgeuse, for one, the red
supergiant in Orion, is about 700 times the size of the Sun and about 15 times
more massive. Rigel, across the constellation from Betelgeuse, is even heftier at
roughly 20 solar masses.
But as writer Elizabeth Fernandez discusses in her article on page 34, even
Betelgeuse and Rigel are diminutive compared with other stars, both confirmed
and theoretical. The most massive star astronomers
have yet identified, a Wolf-Rayet star in the Tarantula
Nebula called R136a1, might have the mass of 200 to
300 Suns. And of stars not yet discovered, particularly
those that exist so far only in theory, one look at the
bar graph on page 39 will show that the phrase " the
Sun is tiny " might be a laughable understatement.
The truth is that in our universe size - like disA
Solar Dynamics Observatory
image of the Sun
taken on June 20, 2013
tance and time - is relative. Fernandez explores
theorized supermassive stars that might have tens of
thousands to hundreds of thousands of solar masses.
(They might even have black holes within them, eating
them from the inside out!) If they exist, it would be safe to say that, at least
when it comes to stars, we haven't seen big yet.
Looking at that bar graph made me muse: If only we could observe the most
massive star that ever formed in our universe cheek by jowl with the Sun. How
would that change our view of things? Voyager's " pale blue dot " image of our
world, suspended like a dust mote in the sprawling emptiness, gave us a new
vantage on just how insignificant our planet, much less we ourselves, are in
the grand scheme of things. Would such a side-by-side comparison of the most
massive star and the " tiny " Sun offer the same humbling perspective? Or something
else entirely, given we can hardly imagine it?
That's one of the great things about astronomy and science in general: We
have so much to discover, learn, and wonder about. How
tremendous it is to imagine the possibilities.
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Sky & Telescope - August 2024

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sky & Telescope - August 2024

Contents
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - Cover1
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - Cover2
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 1
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - Contents
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 3
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 4
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 5
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 6
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 7
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 8
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 9
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 10
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 11
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 12
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 13
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - 14
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Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - Cover3
Sky & Telescope - August 2024 - Cover4
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