Biggest stars in the universe compared with the Sun

Our Sun is an average star. Red dwarfs like Proxima Centauri are a fraction of its size, while red supergiants such as UY Scuti and Betelgeuse placed where the Sun is, would reach out past the orbit of Mars. The sizes of supergiants are uncertain by tens of percent, because their edges are fuzzy and their distances hard to measure.

See stars in 3D, at true scale

Stars

Stephenson 2-18

Stephenson 2-18 is a red supergiant near the star cluster Stephenson 2, and one of the largest stars ever proposed.

WOH G64

WOH G64 is a hypergiant in the Large Magellanic Cloud, wrapped in a thick cocoon of dust it has thrown off.

KY Cygni

KY Cygni is a red supergiant in Cygnus, one of the largest stars in the Milky Way.

VY Canis Majoris

VY Canis Majoris is a red hypergiant losing mass at a spectacular rate, wrapped in a nebula of its own making.

HR 5171 A

HR 5171 A is a rare yellow hypergiant, and rarer still for having a companion star so close that the two touch, sharing an envelope of gas.

Westerlund 1-26

Westerlund 1-26 is a red supergiant in Westerlund 1, the most massive young star cluster in the Milky Way.

RW Cephei

RW Cephei is a red hypergiant, one of the largest stars known.

Mu Cephei

Mu Cephei is a deep red supergiant that William Herschel called 'a most beautiful garnet colour' — hence its nickname, the Garnet Star.

UY Scuti

UY Scuti is a pulsating red supergiant in the constellation Scutum, and for years it topped the lists of the largest known stars.

Betelgeuse

Betelgeuse is the red shoulder of Orion and the most famous star waiting to explode.

Antares

Antares is the red heart of Scorpius, a supergiant so large that if it replaced the Sun it would swallow the orbit of Mars.

Rho Cassiopeiae

Rho Cassiopeiae is a yellow hypergiant, one of the rarest kinds of star, about half a million times brighter than the Sun; in the Sun's place it would reach into the asteroid belt.

Pistol Star

The Pistol Star is a luminous blue variable near the centre of the galaxy, hidden behind so much dust that it was only found in the 1990s with infrared eyes.

Eta Carinae

Eta Carinae is one of the most massive and luminous stars in our galaxy, about 5 million times brighter than the Sun.

Deneb

Deneb marks the tail of Cygnus the Swan and one corner of the Summer Triangle.

Rigel

Rigel is a blue supergiant marking Orion's foot, and one of the most luminous stars visible to the naked eye.

Canopus

Canopus is the second-brightest star in the night sky and a favourite of spacecraft: its brightness and position make it an excellent reference point for navigation far from Earth.

Aldebaran

Aldebaran is the red eye of Taurus the Bull, an orange giant that has swollen to 44 times the Sun's width.

R136a1

R136a1 is the most massive star known: around 200 Suns packed into a Wolf–Rayet star in the Tarantula Nebula.

Polaris

Polaris sits almost exactly above Earth's north pole, so it barely moves while the sky turns around it — which made it the navigator's star for centuries.

Arcturus

Arcturus is an ageing orange giant and the brightest star in the northern half of the sky.

Pollux

Pollux is the brightest star in Gemini and the closest giant star to the Sun.

Spica

Spica, the brightest star in Virgo, is really two hot blue stars orbiting each other every four days, so close that each is pulled into an egg shape by the other.

S2

S2 is a hot young star orbiting Sagittarius A*, the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way.

Vega

Vega was the first star ever photographed and the first to have its spectrum recorded.

Sirius

Sirius is the brightest star in the night sky, partly because it is genuinely luminous and partly because it is close.

S301

S301 is a star a little bigger than the Sun, discovered in 2026 on the tightest known orbit around Sagittarius A*.

Alpha Centauri A

Alpha Centauri A is the closest star to the Sun that is genuinely Sun-like: same type, slightly larger and brighter, and about the same age.

The Sun

The Sun is an ordinary yellow dwarf star, and it holds 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System.

Alpha Centauri B

Alpha Centauri B is the slightly smaller, cooler partner in the closest star system to the Sun.

Epsilon Eridani

Epsilon Eridani is a young orange dwarf, a little smaller and cooler than the Sun, only 10.5 light-years away.

Barnard's Star

Barnard's Star moves across our sky faster than any other star — a tenth of the Moon's width each century.

Proxima Centauri

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to the Sun, a small red dwarf gravitationally tied to the bright pair of Alpha Centauri.

TRAPPIST-1

TRAPPIST-1 is a cool red dwarf barely larger than Jupiter, and it has seven Earth-sized planets — the largest family of rocky worlds known around one star.

Sizes by category

• How big is the universe?
• The Solar System to scale
• Eclipses
• Meteor showers
• When to see the planets
• Space simulations
• Planets
• Moons
• Dwarf planets
• Asteroids & comets
• Exoplanets
• Black holes
• Nebulae & clusters
• Galaxies
• Cosmic structures