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How do you find the diameter of a star?

How do you find the diameter of a star?

It seems obvious: if you want to measure the size of a star, just point your telescope at it and take a picture. Measure the angular size of the star in the image, then multiply by the distance to find the true linear diameter.

What is the maximum radius of a star?

The biggest stars are red supergiants, and the biggest has a radius that is approximately 1,800 times the radius of the Sun (432,300 miles [695,700 km]). The reason for this maximum observed size not well understood.

What is the average radius of a star?

“We find that the typical neutron star, which is about 1.4 times as heavy as our Sun has a radius of about 11 kilometers,” says Badri Krishnan, who leads the research team at the AEI Hannover.

Which star has the largest diameter?

On a stellar scale, it’s really quite average — about half of the known stars are larger; half are smaller. The largest known star in the universe is UY Scuti, a hypergiant with a radius around 1,700 times larger than the sun.

What is the diameter of your planet?

7,917.5 mi
Earth/Diameter

Why is there a size limit on stars?

The reason for this limit is not precisely known, but it is partially due to the Eddington luminosity which defines the maximum amount of luminosity that can pass through the atmosphere of a star without ejecting the gases into space.

What is an average star?

An average star, or intermediate-mass star, is a star with an initial mass of 0.5 to 8 times that of Earth’s sun. It spends most of its time on the main sequence as an orange, yellow, or blue-white dwarf star.

What are the different sizes of stars?

Stars come in huge range of different sizes. Neutron stars can be just 20 to 40 km in diameter, whereas white dwarf can be very similar in size to Earth’s. The largest supergiants, on the other hand, can be more than 1500 times larger than our Sun.

What is the average size of a star?

Based on observational surveys of stars across all stellar types by Kroupa (2001), the average stellar mass is between 0.20 and 0.38 solar masses, and the median stellar mass is between 0.08 and 0.12 solar masses.

What is the biggest star compared to the Sun?

The largest star in the observable universe, VY Canis Majoris, compared to our Sun: It’s diameter is around 2000 times the diameter of our Sun. Take another look. See that tiny dot on the bottom left, that’s our Sun.

Why are stars different sizes?

Differences in size are optical illusions, owing to saturation of the observing cameras. Even through a telescope, most stars appear as simple points of light due to their incredible distances from us. Their differences in color and brightness are easy to see, but size is a different matter entirely.