Largest asteroid
Today, Ceres is considered the largest asteroid in the universe: its mass is almost a third of the entire mass of the asteroid belt, and its diameter is over 1000 kilometers. The asteroid is so large that it is sometimes called a "dwarf planet."

The largest planet
In the photo: on the left - Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, on the right - TRES4

In the constellation Hercules there is a planet TRES4, the size of which is 70% more sizes Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system. But the mass of TRES4 is inferior to the mass of Jupiter. This is due to the fact that the planet is very close to the Sun and is formed by gases constantly heated by the Sun - as a result, the density of this celestial body resembles a kind of marshmallow.

Biggest star
In 2013, astronomers discovered KY Cygni, the largest star in the universe to date; The radius of this red supergiant is 1650 times the radius of the Sun.

The largest black hole
In terms of area, black holes are not that big. However, given their mass, these objects are the largest in the universe. And the largest black hole in space is a quasar, whose mass is 17 billion times (!) greater than the mass of the Sun. This is a huge black hole at the very center of the galaxy NGC 1277, an object that is larger than the entire solar system - its mass is 14% of the total mass of the entire galaxy.

Largest galaxy
The so-called “super galaxies” are several galaxies merged together and located in galactic “clusters”, clusters of galaxies. The largest of these “super galaxies” is IC1101, which is 60 times larger than the galaxy where our Solar System is located. The extent of IC1101 is 6 million light years. For comparison, the length of the Milky Way is only 100 thousand light years.

Shapley Supercluster
The Shapley Supercluster is a collection of galaxies spanning over 400 million light years. The Milky Way is approximately 4,000 times smaller than this super galaxy. The Shapley Supercluster is so much larger that the fastest spaceships It would take Earth trillions of years to cross it.

Huge-LQG Quasar Group
The enormous group of quasars was discovered in January 2013 and is currently considered the largest structure in the entire universe. Huge-LQG is a collection of 73 quasars so large that it would take over 4 billion years to travel from one end to the other at the speed of light. The mass of this grandiose space object is approximately 3 million times greater than the mass of the Milky Way. The Huge-LQG group of quasars is so enormous that its existence refutes Einstein's basic cosmological principle. According to this cosmological position, the universe always looks the same, regardless of where the observer is located.

Space network
Not long ago, astronomers discovered something absolutely amazing - a cosmic network formed by clusters of galaxies surrounded by dark matter, and resembling a giant three-dimensional spider web. How big is this interstellar network? If the Milky Way galaxy were an ordinary seed, then this cosmic network would be the size of a huge stadium.


The science

Of course, the oceans are vast and the mountains incredibly high. Moreover, the 7 billion people who call the Earth home is also incredible a large number of. But, living in this world with a diameter of 12,742 kilometers, it is easy to forget that this is, in essence, a trifle for such a thing as space. When we look into the night sky, we realize that we are just a grain of sand in a vast, infinite Universe. We invite you to learn about the largest objects in space; the size of some of them is difficult for us to imagine.


1) Jupiter

The largest planet in the solar system (142,984 kilometers in diameter)

Jupiter is the most major planet our star system. Ancient astronomers named this planet in honor of the father of the Roman gods, Jupiter. Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun. The planet's atmosphere is 84 percent hydrogen and 15 percent helium. Everything else is acetylene, ammonia, ethane, methane, phosphine and water vapor.


The mass of Jupiter is 318 times the mass of the Earth, and its diameter is 11 times greater. The mass of this giant is 70 percent of the mass of all the planets in the solar system. Jupiter's volume is large enough to accommodate 1,300 Earth-like planets. Jupiter has 63 known moons, but most of them are incredibly small and fuzzy.

2) Sun

The largest object in the Solar System (1,391,980 kilometers in diameter)

Our Sun is a yellow dwarf star, the largest object in the star system in which we exist. The Sun contains 99.8 percent of the mass of this entire system, with Jupiter accounting for most of the rest. The Sun currently consists of 70 percent hydrogen and 28 percent helium, with the remaining substances making up only 2 percent of its mass.


Over time, hydrogen in the Sun's core turns into helium. Conditions in the Sun's core, which makes up 25 percent of its diameter, are extreme. The temperature is 15.6 million Kelvin and the pressure is 250 billion atmospheres. The energy of the Sun is achieved through nuclear fusion reactions. Every second, approximately 700,000,000 tons of hydrogen are converted into 695,000,000 tons of helium and 5,000,000 tons of energy in the form of gamma rays.

3) Our Solar System

15*10 12 kilometers in diameter

Our solar system contains just one star, which is the central object, and nine major planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, as well as many moons, millions of rocky asteroids and billions of icy comets.


4) Star VY Canis Majoris

The largest star in the Universe (3 billion kilometers in diameter)

VY Canis Major- the largest known star and one of the brightest stars in the sky. This is a red hypergiant, which is located in the constellation Canis Major. The radius of this star is approximately 1800-2200 times greater than the radius of our Sun, its diameter is approximately 3 billion kilometers.


If this star were placed in our solar system, it would block the orbit of Saturn. Some astronomers believe that VY is actually smaller—about 600 times the size of the Sun—and would therefore only reach the orbit of Mars.

5) Huge deposits of water

Astronomers have discovered the largest and most massive reserves of water ever found in the Universe. The giant cloud, which is about 12 billion years old, contains 140 trillion times more water than all the Earth's oceans combined contain.


A cloud of gaseous water surrounds a supermassive black hole, which is located 12 billion light years from Earth. This discovery shows that water has dominated the universe for almost all of its existence, the researchers said.

6) Extremely large and massive black holes

21 billion solar masses

Supermassive black holes are the largest black holes in the galaxy, with a mass of hundreds or even thousands of millions of solar masses. Most, and perhaps all, galaxies, including the Milky Way, are believed to contain supermassive black holes at their centers.


One such monster, which has a mass 21 million times greater than the mass of the Sun, is an egg-shaped funnel of stars in the galaxy NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in a sprawling cloud of thousands of galaxies. The hole is located approximately 336 million light years away in the constellation Coma Berenices. This black hole is so huge that it is 12 times larger in diameter than our Solar System.

7) Milky Way

100-120 thousand light years in diameter

The Milky Way is a rugged spiral galaxy that contains 200-400 billion stars. Each of these stars has many planets orbiting it.


According to some estimates, 10 billion planets are in the habitable zone, revolving around their parent stars, that is, in zones where there are all the conditions for the emergence of life similar to Earth.

8) El Gordo

The largest cluster of galaxies (2*10 15 solar masses)

El Gordo is located more than 7 billion light years from Earth, so what we see today is just its early stages. According to researchers who have studied this galaxy cluster, it is the largest, hottest and emits more radiation than any other known cluster at the same distance or further away.


The central galaxy at the center of El Gordo is incredibly bright and has an unusual blue glow. The study authors suggest that this extreme galaxy is the result of a collision and merger of two galaxies.

Using the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical images, scientists estimate that 1 percent of the cluster's total mass is stars, and the rest is hot gas that fills the space between the stars. This ratio of stars to gas is similar to that in other massive clusters.

9) Our Universe

Size – 156 billion light years

Of course, no one could ever name the exact dimensions of the Universe, but, according to some estimates, its diameter is 1.5 * 10 24 kilometers. It’s generally difficult for us to imagine that there is an end somewhere, because the Universe includes incredibly gigantic objects:


Diameter of the Earth: 1.27*10 4 km

Diameter of the Sun: 1.39*10 6 km

Solar system: 2.99 * 10 10 km or 0.0032 light. l.

Distance from the Sun to the nearest star: 4.5 sv. l.

Milky Way: 1.51*10 18 km or 160,000 light. l.

Local group of galaxies: 3.1 * 10 19 km or 6.5 million light years. l.

Local supercluster: 1.2*10 21 km or 130 million light. l.

10) Multiverse

You can try to imagine not one, but many Universes that exist at the same time. A multiverse (or multiple universe) is a feasible collection of many possible universes, including our own, which together contain everything that exists or can exist: the integrity of space, time, material matter and energy, as well as the physical laws and constants that make it all describe.


However, the existence of other Universes besides ours has not been proven, so it is very likely that our Universe is one of a kind.

The human mind is not capable of comprehending the colossal dimensions of our world. We are delighted with the heights of mountains or the depths of oceans, but on a cosmic scale, these values ​​are nothing. Our list will highlight the largest objects in our Universe.

Jupiter

The largest planet in our system is a gas giant named after the Roman god Jupiter. The planet is so large that it contains 70% of the mass of all the other planets in our system.

The gas giant has 63 satellite moons, most of which are invisible to the human eye without a telescope.

VY Canis Majoris (VY CMa)

This is the largest of known to man stars that are 1800 times larger in diameter than the Sun. If this “star” was placed at the center of our system, its boundary would exactly coincide with the orbit of Saturn.

Supermassive black holes

According to scientists, supermassive black holes are the centers of galaxies and can reach sizes a billion times larger than our Sun.

One such hole, known as NGC 4889, is located in the constellation Coma Berenices. Its mass is equal to 21 billion solar masses, and its dimensions are 12 times larger than our entire solar system.

Galaxy clusters

To cross some galaxies, a person will need up to 400 thousand light years of continuous flight. But even these scales are nothing in comparison with galaxy clusters - huge clusters of tens and hundreds of galaxies.

One example of clusters is the El Gordo supercluster, located at a distance of 7 billion light years from our planet. This cluster is also notable for emitting more X-rays than any other.

Universe

The Universe itself, according to rough estimates, reaches a diameter of 165 billion light years. This incredible figure is only a rough estimate of the size of our huge world, since there are a number of theories that claim that the Universe is constantly expanding.

Multiverse

The multiverse is the theoretical set of Universes at any given moment in time. This theory has a right to exist, since it can be proof of the commonality of space and time.

It is not possible to measure the size. Just imagine how big our Universe is and multiply it by the infinity of all the time that has passed since the beginning of time.

Our Universe is truly huge. Pulsars, planets, stars, black holes and hundreds of other objects of incomprehensible size that are found in the Universe.

And today we would like to talk about the 10 biggest things. In this list, we've put together a collection of some of the largest objects in space, including nebulae, pulsars, galaxies, planets, stars, and more.

Without further delay, here is a list of the ten biggest things in the universe.

The largest planet in the Universe is TrES-4. It was discovered in 2006 and is located in the constellation Hercules. The planet, called TrES-4, orbits a star that is about 1,400 light-years away from planet Earth.

The planet TrES-4 itself is a ball that consists primarily of hydrogen. Its dimensions are 20 times greater than the size of the Earth. Researchers claim that the diameter of the discovered planet is almost 2 times (more precisely 1.7) larger than the diameter of Jupiter (this is the largest planet in the solar system). The temperature of TrES-4 is about 1260 degrees Celsius.

By far the largest star is UY Scuti in the constellation Scutum, about 9,500 light-years away. This is one of the brightest stars - it is 340 thousand times brighter than our Sun. Its diameter is 2.4 billion km, which is 1700 times larger than our star, with a weight of only 30 times the mass of the sun. It’s a pity that it is constantly losing mass; it is also called the fastest burning star. This may be why some scientists consider NML Cygnus the largest star, and others consider VY Canis Majoris.

Black holes are not measured in kilometers; the key indicator is their mass. The largest black hole is in the galaxy NGC 1277, which is not the largest. However, the hole in the galaxy NGC 1277 has 17 billion solar masses, which is 17% of the total mass of the galaxy. By comparison, our Milky Way's black hole has a mass of 0.1% of the galaxy's total mass.

7. Largest galaxy

The mega-monster among the currently known galaxies is IC1101. The distance to Earth is about 1 billion light years. Its diameter is about 6 million light years and holds about 100 trillion. stars; for comparison, the diameter of the Milky Way is 100 thousand light years. Compared to the Milky Way, IC 1101 is more than 50 times larger and 2,000 times more massive.

Lyman-alpha blobs (drops, clouds) are amorphous bodies resembling amoebas or jellyfish in shape, consisting of a huge concentration of hydrogen. These blots are the initial and very short stage of generation new galaxy. The largest of them, LAB-1, is more than 200 million light years wide and is located in the constellation Aquarius.

In the photo on the left, LAB-1 is recorded by instruments, on the right is an assumption of what it might look like up close.

A radio galaxy is a type of galaxy that has much greater radio emission compared to other galaxies.

Galaxies, as a rule, are located in clusters (clusters), which have a gravitational connection and expand with space and time. What is located in those places where there are no galaxies? Nothing! Regions of the Universe in which there is only “nothing” and is emptiness. The largest of them is the emptiness of Bootes. It is located in close proximity to the constellation Bootes and has a diameter of about 250 million light years. Distance to Earth approximately 1 billion light years

The largest supercluster of galaxies is the Shapley supercluster. Shapley is located in the constellation Centaurus and appears as a bright clump in the distribution of galaxies. This is the largest array of objects connected by gravity. Its length is 650 million light years.

The largest group of quasars (a quasar is a bright, energetic galaxy) is the Huge-LQG, also called U1.27. This structure consists of 73 quasars and has a diameter of 4 billion light years. However, the Great GRB Wall, which has a diameter of 10 billion light years, also claims primacy - the number of quasars is unknown. The presence of such large groups of quasars in the Universe contradicts Einstein’s Cosmological Principle, so their research is doubly interesting for scientists.

If astronomers have disputes about other objects in the Universe, then in this case almost all of them are unanimous in the opinion that the largest object in the Universe is the Cosmic Web. Endless clusters of galaxies surrounded by black matter form “nodes” and, with the help of gases, “threads”, which in appearance are very reminiscent of a three-dimensional web. Scientists believe that the cosmic web entangles the entire Universe and connects all objects in space.