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The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 11 to 1.54 × 10 12 solar masses), [7][8][9] although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used.
In 2016, the International Astronomical Union (IAU) organized a Working Group on Star Names (WGSN) [2] to catalog and standardize proper names for stars. The WGSN's first bulletin, dated July 2016, [3] included a table of 125 stars comprising the first two batches of names approved by the WGSN (on 30 June and 20 July 2016) together with names of stars adopted by the IAU Executive Committee ...
Below are lists of the largest stars currently known, ordered by radius and separated into categories by galaxy. The unit of measurement used is the radius of the Sun (approximately 695,700 km; 432,300 mi). [ 1 ] The Sun, the orbit of Earth, Jupiter, and Neptune, compared to four stars.
On clear dark nights in unpolluted areas, when the Moon appears thin or below the horizon, the Milky Way, a band of what looks like white dust, can be seen. The Magellanic Clouds of the southern sky are easily mistaken to be Earth-based clouds (hence the name) but are in fact collections of stars found outside the Milky Way known as dwarf galaxies.
The Sun is the brightest star as viewed from Earth, at −26.78 mag. The second brightest is Sirius at −1.46 mag. For comparison, the brightest non-stellar objects in the Solar System have maximum brightnesses of: the Moon −12.7 mag [ 1 ] Venus −4.92 mag. Jupiter −2.94 mag. Mars −2.94 mag.
It was a Type Ia supernova [30] and the most recent Milky Way supernova visible to the unaided eye. [31] In 2009 it was announced that GJ 1214 , a star in Ophiuchus, undergoes repeated, cyclical dimming with a period of about 1.5 days consistent with the transit of a small orbiting planet. [ 32 ]
Additionally, astronomers have found 6 white dwarfs (stars that have exhausted all fusible hydrogen), 21 brown dwarfs, as well as 1 sub-brown dwarf, WISE 0855−0714 (possibly a rogue planet). The closest system is Alpha Centauri, with Proxima Centauri as the closest star in that system, at 4.2465 light-years from Earth.
The following is a list of particularly notable actual or hypothetical stars that have their own articles in Wikipedia, but are not included in the lists above. BPM 37093 — a diamond star Cygnus X-1 — X-ray source