The night sky is filled with stars, which glitter dimly against the black background of space. Unfortunately, a person who peers up at these glowing specks from Earth cannot fully appreciate them for what they are. Although they look mostly the same from our planet, stars vary tremendously in size and color. As an educational tool, I have decided to derive scale pictures of various stars, both famous and obscure, for comparison purposes.
Star Images
- White Dwarf Stars - Includes EG247, Procyon B, Sirius B, and van Maanen's Star. For comparison, the Sun would be about 8,700 pixels wide on this picture.
- Brown Dwarf Stars and Extrasolar Planets - Includes Cha 110913-773444, Gliese 229B, HD 209458b (nicknamed "Osiris"), OGLE-TR-111b, and OTS 44. For comparison, the Sun would be about 435 pixels wide on this picture. Brown dwarfs and large extrasolar planets are often similar to one another, and are therefore grouped together in this picture.
- Main-sequence Stars (1) - Includes 61 Cygni A, Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, Alpha Centauri C, Altair, Barnard's Star, Epsilon Eridani, Ross 154, Sirius A, the Sun, Tau Ceti, Vega, and Wolf 359.
- Main-sequence Stars (2) - Includes 70 Ophiuchi A, 70 Ophiuchi B, Antares B, BL Ceti, Gemma A, Gliese 229 A, Gliese 667 A, LHS 2397a, Luyten's Star, UV Ceti, Zeta 1 Reticuli, and Zeta 2 Reticuli. It is the same scale as the first Main Sequence Star image.
- Subgiant and Giant Stars - Includes Algieba A, Algol B, Arcturus, Becrux A, Bellatrix, Capella A, Capella B, Elnath, Kaus, Australis, Menkar, Miaplacidus,Pollux, Procyon A, Rana, Shaula A, and Spica A. For comparison, the Sun would be about 4 pixels wide on this picture.
- Supergiant and Hypergiant Stars - Includes Alnilam, Antares A, Betelgeuse A, Deneb, Mirfak, Naos, Polaris A, Rigel A, S Doradus, W Cephei A, and Wezen. For comparison, the Sun would be less than one-fifth of a pixel wide on this picture.
Notes
- Stars are not perfect spheres, even thought I have portrayed them as such for simplicity's sake. Some of them rotate very quickly, and as a result are squashed at the poles to become oblate in shape. Therefore, you might think of these images as portraying the stars as they would look from one of their poles.
- The written diameters of these stars are rounded off and do not represent the highest accuracy of measurement.
- I have tried to base the color of these stars on computer-simulated colors derived from the web site What color are the stars?. The author of the page notes that these colors are approximations and, although they may be quite close to the true colors, they are not 100% accurate.
- Betelgeuse A's diameter may not be accurate, as many different values for its diameter are listed around the Internet. Also, this star's diameter varies over time, as it pulses in and out like a beating heart.
