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Massive Stars and their approximate Size

Astronomers have found massive stars in the early universe, primarily located in distant galaxies that formed shortly after the Big Bang. These regions are often studied through advanced telescopes capable of observing very distant light, such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. In terms of size, these monster stars can have diameters ranging from about 100 to over 300 times that of our Sun. The Sun’s diameter is approximately 1.4 million kilometers (about 864,000 miles), so these massive stars could be approximately 140 million to over 420 million kilometers (about 87 million to 261 million miles) in diameter.
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Smash and grab: A heavyweight stellar champion for dying stars

Dying stars that cast off their outer envelopes to form the beautiful yet enigmatic "planetary nebulae" (PNe) have a new heavy-weight champion, the innocuously named PNe BMP1613-5406. Massive stars live fast and die young, exploding as powerful supernovae after only a few million years. However, the vast majority of stars, including our own sun, have much lower mass and may live for many billions of years before going through a short lived but glorious PNe phase. PNe form when only a tiny fraction of unburnt hydrogen remains in the stellar core. Radiation pressure expels much of this material and the hot stellar core can shine through. This ionizes the previously ejected shroud creating a PNe and providing a visible and valuable fossil record of the stellar mass loss process (PNe have nothing to do with planets but acquired this name because their glowing spheres of ionized gas around their hot central stars resembled planets to early observers).

from Astronomy News - Space News, Exploration News, Earth Science News, Earth Science http://bit.ly/2Fv5m1J
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