Planet sizes in perspective

[WildCards]

Give it a minute, just watch.

[ianturbo]

What is that sun thing !!
ian

[Physician]

Fascinating ....... good find Steve, thanks.

(BTW - you should see the size of the men & women on the largest star!)

[psbarham]

nice find steve, but i always thought uranus was bigger than that

[bernmc]

Eep!

[ANTHONY]

but HOW do they know?

[Nick Mann]

There is a good amount of science involved, Tony, but there are still certain fudge factors. There have to be when you are measuring things so far away that are moving differently to the way you are!

I personally still don't like the red-shift and the fact that from this one observation, the universe is expanding and started from a Big Bang. Apparently there isn't enough Dark Matter to cause a Big Crunch. (Now that's an interesting one too - you can't see Dark Matter, so how do you measure a quantity of it in the universe?)

I think that the representations above are probably quite close to a fair comparison, but I always take astronomers with a small pinch of salt. I guess it's the part of me that wants to touch to believe again!

[Davezj]

that is cool

[Kieran]

Feck!! I didn't know Betelgeuse was so small in comparrison to the supergiants!!!

Kind of makes you realise how little effect you have on space and time on our little planet.

An interesting little factoid about VY Canis Majoris, curtesy of Wikipedia:

University of Minnesota professor Roberta M. Humphreys[1] estimates the radius of VY CMa at 1800 to 2100 solar radii.[2] To illustrate, if our Sun was replaced with VY Canis Majoris, its surface would extend to the orbit of Saturn. Assuming the upper size limit of 2100 solar radii, light would take more than 8 hours to travel around the star's circumference.

Similarly, if a human could walk on the surface of Canis Majoris – assuming a speed of 5 km/h (3 mph) for 8 hours a day – the person would have to walk for 650,000 years to circle the star (compared with 2 years 11 months to complete the same task on the Earth, and 310 years 7 months on the Sun).

[Wodjno]

Similarly, if a human could walk on the surface of Canis Majoris – assuming a speed of 5 km/h (3 mph) for 8 hours a day – the person would have to walk for 650,000 years to circle the star (compared with 2 years 11 months to complete the same task on the Earth, and 310 years 7 months on the Sun).

So over 1 billion miles round its circumference

Or to the sun and back 5.5 times

[ANTHONY]

and with all that technology to hand we still cannot cure the common cold

[Cleaning Lady]

and with all that technology to hand we still cannot cure the common cold

LOL!!

Brilliant, i'll have to show Jack (our 8yr old) this he'll be fascinated!