Space is vast.
Hey ya think?
Yep, so much so that even compared to the Sun our planet is no larger than a pin.
But how big exactly can it get?
Let’s find out!
The smallest outer space object that we’ve detected is a micro-asteroid called 2011 CQ1
— it’s just 3 feet across.
Along with other asteroids I’ll be mentioning today, it’s in the belt between Mars and
Jupiter.
There are many similar-sized asteroids, but we’re skipping to Duende — a 98-foot space
body that’s still considered “micro.”
What’s “mini” then...?
Saturn has 82 confirmed moons and thousands of smaller moonlets within its rings.
S/2009 S 1 is one of those — it’s 1,000 feet across.
2006 HY51 is another asteroid from the belt between Jupiter and Mars, but it’s already
much larger at 3,900 feet across.
Coming to one of the numerous moons of Jupiter: Kore is just 1.2 miles in diameter, and it’s
no match for our Moon.
67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is one of the most famous comets.
It’s 2.5 miles across, and was researched by the Rosetta mission in 2014-2016.
Damocles, 6.2 miles across, is a centaur.
No, it doesn’t have anything to do with horses.
In astronomy, centaurs are space objects that have characteristics of both asteroid and
comets.
Ferdinand is a moon of Uranus, and it’s only 12.4 miles in diameter.
It’s a bit over two mounts Everest put together.
And for an even more vivid comparison…
Lacrimosa is an asteroid that’s twice the size of Ferdinand: it’s 26 miles across,
which makes it dwarf even the Olympus Mons on Mars.
Now, Belinda is another moon of Uranus (this planet doesn’t give up, does it?), which
is already double the size of Lacrimosa at 56 miles across.
But there’s still an asteroid larger than that.
Eunike is located in the main belt and is 97.5 miles in diameter.
It’s like the English Channel and another half of it.
Moving on to bigger buddies.
Hi’iaka, just shy of 200 miles across, is a moon of a dwarf planet called Haumea.
Astronomers found it beyond the orbit of Neptune, far, far away from us.
2014 UZ224 is another dwarf planet, almost 400 miles across.
More accurately, it’s a trans-Neptunian object — a space body moving beyond the
orbit of Neptune.
Its dwarf planet status hasn’t been confirmed yet.
Now this one has an unusual name: Makemake.
It’s a confirmed dwarf planet with the diameter of 882 miles.
Finally, we’re getting closer to our realm: Moon, or Luna as some European and Russian
astronomers call it, is our one and only natural satellite.
Its diameter is a bit over 2,100 miles.
Mars, the red planet, despite its color is very cold.
And quite small compared to us: it’s only about 4,200 miles across.
Ah, the blue and green planet, our home: the Earth.
Its diameter is a bit less than 8,000 miles.
A cozy little world, isn’t it?
We’ve already talked about Neptune today — the farthest planet of the Solar System.
It might look small, but it’s actually four times bigger than Earth: 30,600 miles across!
Saturn is a gas giant that absolutely deserves this title: this ringed enormity is over 72,000
miles in diameter!
Jupiter is the largest planet of our Solar System: also a gas giant, it’s almost 87,000
miles across.
It also has a storm that’s been around for at least four centuries!
And finally, the Sun — our shining star, the center of our small world.
It’s over 863,000 miles in diameter, and to get from one pole of it to the other by
airplane you’ll need more than two months — and some serious heat protection.
But compared with other stars, the Sun is tiny.
Take a look at VV Cephei B — it’s one of the moderate-sized stars in Cepheus constellation,
and it’s about 13 to 25 times the size of our star, by different accounts.
Polaris, better known as the North Star, is so bright partly because it’s 37.5 times
bigger than the Sun.
It’s also rather close to us.
Peony Star is the brightest star in the whole Milky Way galaxy.
And now try to imagine that it’s 92 times larger than the Sun too.
It’s not the largest by far, though.
See Deneb, for instance.
It’s more than twice as big as Peony Star with the diameter of 203 times that of the
Sun.
No wonder it’s the brightest in its constellation!
Rho Cassiopeiae is even bigger than that.
Its radius is roughly 400-500 times the Sun.
This measure is called solar radius, by the way.
Betelgeuse has nothing to do with beetles — quite the contrary, given its size.
955 solar radii in astronomy means it’s almost a thousand times bigger than the Sun.
But the most epic star known to us is UY Scuti.
At its peak brightness, astronomers calculated that it’s whopping 1,700 times larger than
the Sun.
That’s 1.5 billion miles — 3,000 times from Earth to Moon and back.
There are objects bigger than stars, though.
Sombrero black hole is one of them — like all black holes, it got its name from the
galaxy it’s in.
Its estimated diameter is 3.7 billion miles.
Messier 87, or M87 for short, is the celebrity of a black hole: it was the first to be directly
photographed in 2019.
And its size is enormous: 23.6 billion miles across.
That’s why it’s called a supermassive black hole.
Holmberg 15A, though, is an ultramassive one.
It’s 36.7 billion miles across.
And just imagine its mass, knowing that with each solar mass a black hole gains only about
5 miles in diameter!
IC 1101 is one of the farthest black holes from us, and it’s the center of an enormous
galaxy far, far away.
Its diameter is 165 billion miles.
And behold the most gargantuan of black holes that we know of: TON 618.
Its diameter is 0.04 light-years, which means it would take light over three months to travel
from one of its ends to the other.
Out of the domain of singular bodies and into that of cosmic clusters — the Stingray nebula,
0.3 light-years wide, is the youngest of nebulae we know of.
And the smallest on our list.
The Eskimo nebula is more than twice the Stingray’s size at 0.68 light-years across.
It’s also known as the Clownface nebula for its peculiar shape.
Boomerang nebula looks like — you guessed it —a koala! – no, a boomerang, and is
again more than double the size of the previous item: 1.7 light-years in diameter.
Butterfly nebula is 3.5 light-years across.
Just imagine: light needs three and a half years to get from one end of it to the other,
while it gets from the Sun to Earth in just 8 minutes!
Pelican nebula is even larger at 7.1 light-years in diameter.
Well, pelicans are generally bigger than butterflies, so makes sense.
Omega nebula, three times as large as the Pelican, ranges for 22 light-years.
Its name only means that it looks like the Greek letter omega, not that it’s the last
or biggest one.
The Horsehead nebula proves that — four times.
At 80 light-years across, you’d spent an entire lifetime in space and at the speed
of light just to get from end to end of this humongous equine.
But even that horsey is afraid of spiders, especially such big ones: the Tarantula nebula
is 650 light-years in diameter, which is more than 8 times larger than the Horsehead.
And yet one star nebula puts all the rest of them to shame: NGC 604 is the largest known
one so far, and its width is 1,500 light-years.
Three quarters of the current human era spent entirely in space.
Moving on to larger space objects: Messier 32 is a dwarf galaxy, but its size is anything
but modest compared to what we’ve seen so far: 6,500 light-years across.
Large Magellanic Cloud is 14,000 light-years in diameter, and it’s our Milky Way’s
galaxy satellite.
It moves in a pattern and kind of orbits us.
The Milky Way itself, at the same time, is about 100,000 light-years across.
It’s thought to be a spiral galaxy, but we can’t see it from outside since, well,
we’re inside it ourselves.
IC 1101 — does it ring a bell?
Yeah, this galaxy is home to the second largest black hole I mentioned earlier.
Its size ais mind-blowing two million light-years.
The Local Group is the name of a galaxy cluster that includes our Milky Way and hundreds of
other galaxies, bound by gravitational force.
Its span is 10 million light-years.
Virgo supercluster houses the famous M87 black hole (the one that was photographed).
It’s 11 times wider than the Local Group at 110 million light-years.
Laniakea supercluster is five times that size, though, and that’s the supercluster in which
we humbly make our living.
And finally, even superclusters are tied by gravity into supercluster complexes, such
as the BOSS Great Wall — it’s 1 billion light-years across.
The Huge LQG is 4 billion light-years in diameter.
LQG stands for Large Quasar Group, so it’s both large and huge.
Redundant and, quite fitting.
Yet the largest space object in the observable Universe is more than twice that size.
The Hercules Corona Borealis Great Wall is a galactic supercluster complex that is simply
unfathomable.
Can you imagine 10 billion light-years?
Neither can I.
So if you have some problems you think are big, compare them to objects in the universe
and see that they’re not so big after all, and maybe you can solve them a little easier.
A little philosophy to go with your astronomy today – no extra charge.
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