The most massive objects in the universe. The largest objects in the universe The largest body in space

space objects

In astronomy, space objects are natural or artificial celestial bodies that are outside the Earth's atmosphere. Artificial space objects are space vehicles or their parts that separated during flight. Natural space objects include celestial bodies: stars, planets, their satellites, comets and asteroids. Such a strict interpretation is not always followed today. Thus, according to the UN Conventions 1971 and 1974, the term "space object" is used only in relation to objects of artificial origin.

clot of matter

But the popular publication USA Today, citing a message about the discovery of Japanese astronomers, on the contrary, calls a cosmic object not a celestial body, but a clot of stellar matter. This 200 million light-year-long star formation, consisting of three curvilinear outgrowths, was discovered using the powerful new Subaru and Keck telescopes, and is considered the largest discovered in the universe.

But if we still talk about celestial bodies, then, of course, the largest of them are stars. Looking from Earth like small bright dots in a dark sky, stars are huge globular clusters of gases heated to an incredibly high temperature. The myriad stars that exist in the universe differ from each other in age, size, density, composition and temperature.

Star sizes

The largest star ever found by man was discovered in 2010. At the European Southern Observatory, with the help of the Hubble Space Telescope, British scientists observed the stars of the Large Magellanic Cloud, where several luminaries were found, many times larger than the Sun.

Astronomers, who until now believed that stars can reach maximum sizes exceeding the size of our star by no more than 150 times, were amazed - the star R136a1 is 265 times larger than the Sun! If this supergiant were in our Galaxy, it would be brighter than the Sun as much as the Sun is brighter than the Moon. Naturally, this star is also the largest star in the Universe (from those discovered by astronomers).

Star evolution

According to the existing theory of stellar evolution, all luminaries “lose weight” throughout their lives, and supermassive stars are more intense than others. The date of the alleged formation of the star R136a1 is about a million years, during which time it is estimated to have lost up to one-fifth of its initial mass. Then its mass at birth should have exceeded the mass of the Sun by 320 times. Stars of this magnitude, according to scientists, can be extremely rare, and mainly in superdense star clusters.

El Gordo means "fat man" in Spanish. This is how astronomers named the largest and hottest known cluster of galaxies in our universe. The El Gordo cluster is located 9.7 billion light-years from Earth. It consists of two separate smaller clusters colliding at speeds of several million kilometers per hour.

Pulsar J1311-3430 or "Black Widow" weighs as much as two suns, but it is no more than the width of the state of Washington. Every day, this super-dense neutron star is getting bigger, "eating" a nearby companion star. In 93 minutes, the pulsar makes a complete revolution around its victim, bringing down streams of radiation on it and taking away its energy. This process has one outcome: one day the victim will finally disappear.

A year on the asteroid (3753) Cruitney lasts about the same as on Earth - 364 days. This means that this celestial body rotates at almost the same distance from the Sun as our planet. Our orbital twin was discovered in 1986. However, there is no threat of a collision: Cruitney will not come closer to Earth than 12 million kilometers.

Rejected by its "parent" star, the lone planet CFBDSIR2149 wanders the universe at a distance of 100 light-years from us. Most likely, this wanderer was thrown out of her solar system during the turbulent years of its formation, when the orbits of other planets were determined.

The Smith Cloud is a giant collection of hydrogen gas that is millions of times heavier than the Sun. Its length is 11 thousand light years, and its width is 2.5 thousand years. The shape of the cloud resembles a torpedo, and in fact it is the same: the cloud rushes towards our galaxy and crashes into the Milky Way in about 27 million years.

At 300 thousand light-years from the center of the Milky Way is a satellite galaxy, which is almost entirely composed of dark matter and gas. Scientists discovered evidence of its existence in 2009. And only a few months ago, astronomers managed to find four 100-million-year-old stars in this cluster of dark matter.

The blue hue of Marble Planet HD 189733b is associated with the oceans. In fact, this is a gas giant, rotating in an orbit close to the star. There has never been water. The temperature exceeds 927 degrees Celsius. And the “sky blue” is created by rain from molten glass.

When our universe was only about 875 million years old, a black hole with a mass of 12 billion suns formed in space. By comparison, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way (pictured above) is only 4 million times as massive as the sun. Supermassive J0100+2802 lies at the center of a galaxy 12.8 billion light-years away. Now scientists are puzzling over the question: how did she manage to reach such sizes in such a short period of time?

The star R136a1 is 256 times heavier than the Sun and 7.4 million times brighter than it. Scientists believe that colossi of this size may appear as a result of the merger of many smaller stars. The lifespan of a fiery chimera is only a few million years, after which its components burn out.

The Boomerang Nebula, located 5,000 light-years from Earth, is the coldest place in the universe. The temperature inside the cloud of gas and dust reaches -272 degrees below zero. The cloud is expanding at a speed of about 590 thousand kilometers per hour. The gas of the nebula is cooled by rapid expansion in the same way as the refrigerant in refrigerators.

Our ranking includes the largest, coldest, hottest, oldest, deadliest, lonely, dark, brightest and other "very-very" objects that man has discovered in space. Some are literally within reach, while others are on the edge of the universe known to us.

The ancient pyramids, the tallest skyscraper in the world in Dubai, almost half a kilometer high, the grandiose Everest - just looking at these huge objects is breathtaking. And at the same time, compared to some objects in the universe, they are microscopic in size.

The largest asteroid

largest planet

The biggest star

The biggest black hole

largest galaxy

Shapley Supercluster

Huge-LQG group of quasars

space network

Our universe is truly huge. Pulsars, planets, stars, black holes and hundreds of other objects of incomprehensible size that are 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 ado, 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. A 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 mainly of hydrogen. Its size is 20 times the size of the Earth. The researchers claim that the diameter of the discovered planet is almost 2 times (more precisely, 1.7) the diameter of Jupiter (it is the largest planet in the solar system). The temperature of TrES-4 is about 1260 degrees Celsius.

To date, the largest star is UY Scutum in the constellation Scutum, about 9500 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 sun, with a weight of only 30 times the mass of the sun. It is a pity that it is constantly losing mass, it is also called the fastest burning star. Perhaps that is why some scientists consider the Cygnus NML to be the largest star, while others consider VY Canis Major.

Black holes are not measured in kilometers, the key indicator is their mass. The most gigantic 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. For comparison, the black hole in our Milky Way has a mass of 0.1% of the total mass of the galaxy.

7. The largest galaxy

The mega-monster among the galaxies known in our time is IC1101. The distance to the 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 over 50 times larger and 2,000 times more massive.

lyaxes (drops, clouds) Lyman-alpha 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 the birth of a new galaxy. The largest of them, LAB-1, is over 200 million light-years across and lies in the constellation of Aquarius.

In the photo on the left, LAB-1 is fixed by devices, on the right - an assumption of how it may look close.

A radio galaxy is a type of galaxy that emits much more radio emission than other galaxies.

Galaxies, as a rule, are located in clusters (clusters), which have a gravitational connection and expand along with space and time. What is in those places where there is no location of galaxies? Nothing! The area of ​​the Universe in which there is only "nothing" is emptiness. The largest of them is the void of Bootes. It is located in close proximity to the constellation Bootes and has a diameter of about 250 million light years. The distance to the Earth is 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 densification in the distribution of galaxies. This is the largest array of objects bound together by gravity. Its length is 650 million light years.

The largest group of quasars (a quasar is a bright, energetic galaxy) is 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 the championship - 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 argue 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 outwardly very much resemble a three-dimensional web. Scientists believe that the cosmic web entangles the entire universe and connects all objects in space.

Overview of the largest space objects and phenomena.

We know from school years that the largest planet is Jupiter. It is he who is the leader in size of the planets of the solar system. In this article we will tell you which is the largest planet and space object in the Universe.

What is the name of the largest planet in the universe?

TrES-4- is a gas giant and the largest planet in the universe. Oddly enough, this object was discovered only in 2006. This is a huge planet, which is many times the size of Jupiter. It revolves around the star, just like the Earth around the Sun. The planet is colored orange-brown, because the temperature on its surface is more than 1200 degrees. Therefore, it does not have a solid surface, it is basically a boiling mass, consisting mainly of helium and hydrogen.

Due to the constant occurrence of chemical reactions, the planet is very hot, it radiates heat. The strangest thing is the density of the planet, it is very high for such a mass. Therefore, scientists are not sure that it consists only of gas.

What is the name of the largest planet in the solar system?

One of the largest planets in the universe is Jupiter. This is one of the giant planets that are predominantly gas. The composition is also very similar to the Sun, mostly composed of hydrogen. The rotation speed of the planet is very high. Because of this, strong winds form around it, which provoke the appearance of colored clouds. Due to the huge size of the planet and the speed of its movement, it has a strong magnetic field that attracts many celestial bodies.

This is due to the large number of satellites of the planet. One of the largest is Ganymede. Despite this, recently scientists have become very interested in Jupiter's moon Europa. They believe that the planet, which is covered with a crust of ice, has an ocean inside, with the simplest possible life. Which makes it possible to assume the existence of living beings.

The biggest stars in the universe

• VY. Until recently, it was considered the largest star, it was discovered back in 1800. The size is about 1420 times the radius of the Sun. But at the same time, the mass is only 40 times larger. This is due to the low density of the star. The most interesting thing is that the star has been actively losing its size and mass over the past few centuries. This is due to the passage of thermonuclear reactions on its surface. Thus, as a result, an early explosion of this star is possible with the formation of a black hole or a neutron star.
• But in 2010, NASA's Space Shuttle discovered another huge star that lies outside the solar system. She was given a name R136a1. This star is 250 times larger than the Sun and shines much brighter. If we compare how brightly the Sun shines, then the glow of the star was similar to the radiance of the Sun and the Moon. Only in this case, the Sun will shine much less, and more like the Moon than a huge giant space object. This confirms that almost all stars age and lose their brightness. This is due to the presence on the surface of a huge amount of active gases that constantly enter into chemical reactions and decompose. Since the discovery, the star has lost a quarter of its mass, just due to chemical reactions.

The universe is not well understood. This is due to the fact that it is simply physically impossible to arrive on planets that are at a distance of a huge number of light years. Therefore, scientists are studying these planets with the help of modern equipment, telescopes.

Top 10 largest space objects and phenomena

There is a huge number of cosmic bodies and objects that amaze with their size. Below is the TOP 10 of the largest objects and phenomena in space.

List:

1. is the largest planet in the solar system. Its volume is 70% of the total volume of the system itself. At the same time, more than 20% falls on the Sun, and 10% is distributed among other planets and objects. The most interesting thing is that there are many satellites around this celestial body.

   
   

2. . We believe that the Sun is a huge star. In fact, it is nothing more than a yellow dwarf star. And our planet is only a small part of what revolves around this star. The sun is constantly decreasing. This is due to the fact that hydrogen is synthesized into helium during micro-explosions. The star is painted in a bright color, and heats our planet due to an exothermic reaction with the release of heat.

   
   

3. Ours. Its size is 15 x 10 12 degrees of kilometers. Consists of 1 star and 9 planets that move around this bright object in certain trajectories, which are called orbits.

   
   

4. VY is a star located in the constellation Canis Major. It is a red supergiant, its size is the largest in the universe. In comparison, it is about 2000 times larger in diameter than our Sun and the entire system. The intensity of the glow is higher.

   
   VY

5. Huge reserves of water. This is nothing more than a giant cloud, inside of which there is a huge amount of water vapor. Their number is about 143 times greater than the volume of the earth's ocean. The scientists named the object

   
   

6. Huge black hole NGC 4889. This hole is located at a great distance from our Earth. It is nothing more than a funnel-shaped abyss, around which there are stars, as well as planets. This phenomenon is located in the constellation Coma Berenices, its size is 12 times larger than our entire solar system.

   
   

7. it is nothing but a spiral Galaxy, which consists of a multitude of stars, around which planets and satellites can revolve. Accordingly, the Milky Way may contain a huge number of planets on which life is possible. Because on them there is a possibility that there are conditions favorable for the origin of life.

   
   

8. El Gordo. This is a huge cluster of galaxies that are distinguished by a bright glow. This is due to the fact that such a cluster consists of only 1% of stars. The rest falls on hot gas. This is what causes the glow. It was by this bright light that scientists discovered this cluster. The researchers suggest that this object appeared as a result of the merger of two galaxies. The photo shows the glow of this merger.

   
   El Gordo

9. superblob. This is something similar to a huge space bubble, which is filled inside with stars, dust and planets. It is a collection of galaxies. There is a hypothesis that it is from this gas that new galaxies are formed.

   
   

10. . It is something strange, like a labyrinth. This is the cluster of all galaxies. Scientists believe that it is not formed by chance, but according to a certain pattern.

    
    

The universe has been studied very little, so over time, new record holders may appear and will be called the largest objects.

VIDEO: The largest objects and phenomena in the Universe