User:Nussun05/List of largest stars
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This is an open-source version of the official list of largest stars, everyone can edit this one.
![Thumb image](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/cc/Star-sizes.jpg/640px-Star-sizes.jpg)
- Mercury < Mars < Venus < Earth
- Earth < Neptune < Uranus < Saturn < Jupiter
- Jupiter < Wolf 359 < Sun < Sirius A
- Sirius A < Pollux < Arcturus < Aldebaran
- Aldebaran < Rigel A < Antares A < Betelgeuse - though Betelgeuse smaller then Antares as seen in recent studies.[1]
- Betelgeuse < Mu Cephei < VV Cephei A < VY Canis Majoris
Below is a list of the largest stars currently known, ordered by radius. The unit of measurement used is the radius of the Sun (approximately 695,700 km; 432,288 mi).
The exact order of this list is incomplete, as great uncertainties remain, especially when deriving various parameters used in calculations, such as stellar luminosity and effective temperature. Often stellar radii can only be expressed as an average or within a large range of values. Values for stellar radii vary significantly in sources and throughout the literature, mostly as the boundary of the very tenuous atmosphere (opacity) greatly differs depending on the wavelength of light in which the star is observed.
Radii of several stars can be directly obtained by stellar interferometry. Other methods can use lunar occultations or from eclipsing binaries, which can be used to test other indirect methods of finding true stellar size. Only a few useful supergiant stars can be occulted by the Moon, including Antares and Aldebaran. Examples of eclipsing binaries are Epsilon Aurigae, VV Cephei, and HR 5171.