Astronomers have the concept of “the largest object in the Universe.” This status is periodically assigned to one or another object, but their very presence is already a sensation. What kind of "giants" are we talking about? we're talking about and where are they located? And which one is really “the best”? Here are the results of some of the latest astronomical discoveries.
Scientists have discovered the age of the Universe
Supervoid
This largest cold spot in the Universe is located in the southern part of the constellation Eridanus. The extent of the spot is 1.8 billion light years. Although "void" means "emptiness" in English, this name for this region of space is not entirely fair. It's just that there are about 30 percent fewer galaxy clusters here than in the space around them.
Cold spots are filled with cosmic relic microwave radiation. But so far scientists are not entirely clear how they arise. One version says that these are traces of black holes of parallel universes. But another hypothesis claims that this is the result of the passage of protons through voids: passing through empty space, particles lose their energy... However, it is possible that there is no connection at all between cold spots and voids.
Superblob
In 2006, the title of the largest object in the Universe was awarded to a cosmic “bubble” (blob) with a length of 200 million light years, which is a giant accumulation of gas, dust and galaxies. It is curious that the galaxies in this cluster, which resembles a jellyfish in shape, are located four times more densely among themselves than usual in the Universe.
Clusters of galaxies and balls of gas inside a giant bubble are called Lyman Alpha bubbles. According to scientists, they formed approximately 2 billion years after the Big Bang.
As for the superblob itself, it was likely formed when massive stars that existed at the dawn of space went supernova, releasing a gigantic volume of gas.
Perhaps the superblob is one of the most ancient space objects. So much gas accumulates in it that over time more and more new galaxies will begin to form from it.
Great Wall CfA2
It was discovered by American astrophysicist Margaret Joan Geller and John Peter Huchra while studying the redshift effect for the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. CfA2 is 500 million light-years long and 16 million light-years wide. The name "Great Wall" is given to this space region because its shape resembles the Great Wall of China.
It is possible that the extent of CfA2 may be even greater - 750 million light years. But the exact parameters cannot yet be named, since the “wall” is partially located in the “avoidance zone” - it is covered by dense accumulations of gas and dust, which contributes to the distortion of optical wavelengths.
Great Wall of Sloan
It was discovered in 2003 as part of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a scientific mapping of galaxies to determine the presence of the largest objects in the Universe. This object consists of several superclusters, total length which is 1.4 billion light years away.
Although, according to cosmological principles, objects larger than 1.2 billion light years cannot exist in the Universe, the presence of Sloan's Great Wall completely refutes this theory.
By the way, some of the clusters that make up the Great Wall of Sloan have very interesting characteristics. So, one of them has a core of galaxies, which from the outside looks like giant antennae. Inside the other there is a process of close interaction and merging of galaxies.
Giant gamma ring
The giant galactic gamma-ray ring (Giant GRB Ring) is currently considered the second largest object in the Universe. Its extent is 5 billion light years.
The object was discovered like this. While studying gamma-ray bursts produced by the death of massive stars, astronomers noticed a series of nine bursts, the sources of which were located at the same distance from Earth. They formed a ring in the sky that was 70 times the diameter of the full Moon.
It was hypothesized that the gamma ring could be a projection of a certain sphere around which all bursts of gamma radiation occurred in a relatively short period time - about 250 million years.
But what could create such a sphere? One theory says that galaxies cluster around regions with high concentrations of dark matter. But in fact, the exact reason for the formation of such structures remains unknown.
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.
1. 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 with Milky Way IC 1101 is more than 50 times larger and 2000 times more massive.
The oceans are, of course, vast, and the mountains are impressive in their size. 7 billion people is also not a small number. Since we live on planet Earth (which has a diameter of 12,742 km), it is easy for us to forget how tiny we truly are. To realize this, all we have to do is look at the night sky. Looking into it, it becomes clear that we are just a speck of dust in an unimaginably vast universe. The list of objects below will help put human greatness into perspective.
10. Jupiter
Largest planet (diameter 142.984 km)
Jupiter is the largest planet in the solar system. Ancient astronomers called Jupiter the king of the Roman gods. Jupiter is the 5th planet from the Sun. Its atmosphere consists of 84% hydrogen and 15% helium with small additions of acetylene, ammonia, ethane, methane, phosphite and water vapor. The mass of Jupiter is 318 times greater than the mass of the Earth, and its diameter is 11 times greater than that of the Earth. The mass of Jupiter is 70% of the mass of all other planets in our solar system. Jupiter's volume can accommodate 1,300 Earth-sized planets. Jupiter has 63 satellites (moons) known to science, but almost all of them are very small and dim.
9. Sun
The largest object in the Solar System (diameter 1,391,980 km) 
The Sun (yellow dwarf star) is the largest object in the Solar System. Its mass makes up 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System, and Jupiter's mass takes up almost the rest. On this moment The mass of the Sun consists of 70% hydrogen and 28% helium. All other components (metals) occupy less than 2%. The percentages change very slowly as the Sun converts hydrogen into helium at its core. Conditions in the Sun's core, which occupies approximately 25% of the star's radius, are extreme. The temperature reaches 15.6 million degrees Kelvin, and the pressure reaches 250 billion atmospheres. The solar power of 386 billion megawatts is provided by nuclear fusion reactions. Every second, about 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.
8. solar system
Our solar system consists of a central star (the Sun) and nine planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto, as well as numerous moons, millions of rocky asteroids and billions of icy comets.
7. VY Canis Major(VYCMa)
The largest star in the Universe (3 billion kilometers in diameter) 
The star VY Canis Majoris (VY Canis Majoris) is the largest and also one of the brightest stars currently known. It is a red hypergiant in the constellation Canis Major. Its radius is 1800-2200 times greater than the radius of the Sun, and its diameter is 3 billion kilometers. If it were placed in our solar system, its surface would extend beyond the orbit of Saturn. Some astronomers disagree with this statement and believe that the star VY Canis Majoris is actually much smaller, only 600 times larger than the Sun, and would only stretch to the orbit of Mars.
6. Most a large number of water ever discovered
Astronomers have discovered the largest and oldest mass of water ever discovered in the Universe. A giant cloud 12 billion years old carries 140 trillion times more water than all the Earth's oceans combined. A cloud of water vapor surrounds a supermassive black hole called a Quasar, located 12 billion light-years from Earth. According to scientists, this discovery proved that water has dominated the Universe throughout its existence.
5. Extremely huge supermassive black holes
(21 billion times the mass of the Sun) 
A supermassive black hole is the largest type of black hole in a galaxy, ranging in size from hundreds of thousands to billions of solar masses. Most, if not all, galaxies, including the Milky Way, are believed to contain a supermassive black hole at their center. One of these newly discovered monsters, weighing 21 billion times the mass of the Sun, is an egg-shaped swirl of stars. It is known as NGC 4889, the brightest galaxy in a sprawling cloud of thousands of galaxies. This cloud is located 336 million light years from the constellation Coma Berenices. This black hole is so big that our entire solar system would fit there about a dozen times over.
4. Milky Way
100,000-120,000 light years in diameter 
The Milky Way is a closed spiral galaxy with a diameter of 100,000-120,000 light years and containing 200-400 billion stars. It may contain at least that many planets, 10 billion of which may orbit within the habitable zone of their parent stars.
3. El Gordo "El Gordo"
Largest galaxy cluster (2×1015 solar masses) 
El Gordo is located over 7 billion light years from Earth, meaning it has been observed since birth. According to scientists involved in the study, this cluster of galaxies is the most massive, hottest and emits more X-rays than any other known cluster at this distance or even further.
The central galaxy in the middle of El Gordo is unusually bright and has amazing blue rays at optical wavelengths. The authors believe that this extreme galaxy was formed as a result of the collision and merger of two galaxies at the center of each cluster.
Using data from the Spitzer Space Telescope and optical images, it was estimated that about 1% of the cluster's total mass is occupied by stars, while the rest is hot gas filling the gaps between stars and visible to the Chandra telescope. This ratio of gas to stars is consistent with results obtained from other massive clusters.
2. Universe
Estimated size - 156 billion light years 
A picture is worth a thousand words, so look at this poster and try to imagine/understand how big our Universe is. The mind-blowing numbers are listed below. Here is a link to the full-size image.
Earth 1.27×104 km
Sun 1.39×106 km
Solar System 2.99×1010 km or 0.0032 light years
Solar interstellar space 6.17×1014 km or 65 light years
Milky Way 1.51×1018 km or 160.00 light years
Local Group of Galaxies 3.1×1019 km or 6.5 million light years
Local Supercluster 1.2×1021 km or 130 million light years
Universe 1.5×1024 km or 156 billion light years (but no one knows for sure)
1. Multiverse
Imagine not one, but many universes existing at the same time. The multiverse (or meta-verse) is a hypothetical collection of many possible universes (including the historical universe in which we exist). Together they form everything that exists and can exist: the community of space, time, matter and energy, as well as the physical laws and constants that describe them. But, again, there is no evidence for the existence of a multiverse, so it may well be that our universe is the largest.
The universe is something that our minds cannot comprehend. Some scientists call the entire material world around us the Universe. The human mind is simply not able to understand and analyze its true dimensions.
Nobody knows whether the Universe is finite or not, but it is scientifically proven that it is constantly expanding. This place combines amazing objects such as nebulae, galaxies, quasars, star clusters, black holes, quasars. Let's talk about the largest objects in the Universe.
The largest asteroid in the Universe
The largest asteroid is called Vesta, and it is recognized as the brightest visible asteroid that can be seen in the starry sky even without a telescope or spotting scope. The dimensions of the asteroid are 578x560x478 kilometers. It has a slightly elongated asymmetrical shape and can even be classified as a dwarf planet such as Mercury. The asteroid is located in the belt between Jupiter and Mars. The celestial body was discovered in 2010 using the Dawn spacecraft. It is worth saying that the asteroid does not pose a threat to the Earth due to the high gravity acting on it from Jupiter.
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The most major planets Universe
The largest black hole
The largest supermassive black hole in the visible Universe was discovered in the constellation Perseus at a distance of 228 light years from Earth. This black hole is located in the galaxy: NGC 1277. This black hole contains a simply gigantic amount of matter, which is approximately twelve billion times the mass of our Sun.
It turned out that this black hole weighs about 15 percent of the mass of the entire galaxy, although black holes usually weigh no more than one and a half percent. By the way, such a small black hole is located in the center of our Milky Way. Scientists agreed that a galaxy in which there is a supermassive hole is very strange, since the nature of the formation of such an object is incomprehensible to physicists.
Largest galaxy
The largest galaxy in the Universe is called IC 1101. It is a large supergiant that is located in the center of the Abell 2029 galaxy cluster. The galaxy is located at a distance of one billion light years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. It is a CD class galaxy with a diameter of 7 million light years. The object is considered the largest among the known galaxies that have been discovered throughout cosmological research.
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Stars and constellations
The galaxy IC 1101 contains more than one hundred trillion stars. If this galaxy were located in the place of the Milky Way, then it would absorb not only it, but also the Andromeda Nebula, the Triangulum Galaxy, the Large and Small Magellanic clouds.
Shapley Supercluster
The Shapley Supercluster is a huge cluster of stars that was discovered in 1989. It has a high density of stars. In total, according to preliminary calculations, the Shapley Supercluster contains a concentration of stars more than 500 million light years away. It also contains large galaxies A3560, A3558 and A3559. In total, there are about twenty-five galaxies in the Shapley Supercluster.
The largest pulsar
The largest pulsar, which is a bright pulsating star with a super-dense mass, was discovered in the region of the Tarantula Nebula. It was discovered using a powerful gamma-ray telescope 165 thousand light-years from the Milky Way galaxy. A pulsar was formed after a star exploded, and its core became a powerful neutron star. With a diameter of a couple of kilometers, the pulsar has a mass of twenty solar masses. Its gamma-ray emission is five times higher than that of the famous pulsar from the Crab Nebula. The pulsar rotates at a speed of twenty revolutions per second, emitting powerful gamma radiation.
The distant ancestors of modern inhabitants of planet Earth believed that it was the largest object in the universe, and the small-sized Sun and Moon revolved around it in the sky day after day. The smallest formations in space seemed to them to be stars, which were compared to tiny luminous points attached to the firmament. Centuries have passed, and man's views on the structure of the Universe have changed dramatically. So what will modern scientists now answer the question of, what is the largest space object?
Age and structure of the Universe
According to the latest scientific data, our Universe has existed for about 14 billion years, this is the period in which its age is calculated. Having begun its existence at a point of cosmic singularity, where the density of matter was incredibly high, it, constantly expanding, reached its present state. Today, it is believed that the Universe is built from only 4.9% of the ordinary and familiar matter from which all astronomical objects visible and perceived by instruments are composed.
Previously, when exploring space and the movement of celestial bodies, ancient astronomers had the opportunity to rely only on their own observations, using only simple measuring instruments. Modern scientists, in order to understand the structure and size of various formations in the Universe, have artificial satellites, observatories, lasers and radio telescopes, the most sophisticated sensors. At first glance, it seems that with the help of scientific achievements it is not at all difficult to answer the question of what is the largest space object. However, this is not at all as easy as it seems.
Where is there a lot of water?
By what parameters should we judge: by size, weight or quantity? For example, the largest cloud of water in space was discovered from us at a distance that light travels in 12 billion years. The total amount of this substance in the form of vapor in this region of the Universe exceeds all the reserves of the Earth's oceans by 140 trillion times. There is 4 thousand times more water vapor there than is contained in our entire galaxy, called the Milky Way. Scientists believe that this is the oldest cluster, formed long before the times when our Earth as a planet appeared to the world from the solar nebula. This object, rightfully classified as one of the giants of the Universe, appeared almost immediately after its birth, just after a billion years or maybe a little more.
Where is the greatest mass concentrated?
Water is supposed to be the oldest and most abundant element not only on planet Earth, but also in the depths of space. So, what is the largest space object? Where is the most water and other matter? But it is not so. The mentioned vapor cloud exists only because it is concentrated around a black hole endowed with enormous mass and is held in place by the force of its gravity. The gravitational field near such bodies turns out to be so strong that no objects are able to leave their boundaries, even if they move at the speed of light. Such “holes” in the Universe are called black precisely because light quanta are not able to overcome a hypothetical line called the event horizon. Therefore, they cannot be seen, but a huge mass of these formations constantly makes itself felt. The sizes of black holes, purely theoretically, may not be very large due to their fantastic density. At the same time, an incredible mass is concentrated in a small point in space, hence, according to the laws of physics, gravity arises.
The closest black holes to us
Our native Milky Way is classified by scientists as a spiral galaxy. Even the ancient Romans called it the “milk road”, since from our planet it has the corresponding appearance of a white nebula, spread out in the sky in the blackness of the night. And the Greeks came up with a whole legend about the appearance of this cluster of stars, where it represents milk splashing from the breasts of the goddess Hera.
Like many other galaxies, the black hole at the center of the Milky Way is a supermassive formation. They call it “Sagittarius A-star”. This is a real monster that literally devours everything around it with its own gravitational field, accumulating within its limits huge masses of matter, the amount of which is constantly increasing. However, the nearby region, precisely because of the existence of the indicated retractor funnel in it, turns out to be a very favorable place for the appearance of new star formations.
The local group, along with ours, also includes the Andromeda galaxy, which is closest to Milky Way. It also belongs to the spiral, but several times larger and includes about a trillion stars. For the first time in written sources of ancient astronomers it was mentioned in the works of the Persian scientist As-Sufi, who lived more than a thousand years ago. This huge formation appeared to the mentioned astronomer as a small cloud. It is for its appearance from Earth that the galaxy is also often called the Andromeda Nebula.
Even much later, scientists could not imagine the scale and size of this cluster of stars. For a long time they endowed this cosmic formation with a relatively small size. The distance to the Andromeda Galaxy was also significantly downplayed, although in fact the distance to it is, according to modern science, the distance that even light travels over a period of more than two thousand years.
Supergalaxy and galaxy clusters
The largest object in space could be considered a hypothetical supergalaxy. Theories have been put forward about its existence, but the physical cosmology of our time considers the formation of such an astronomical cluster implausible due to the impossibility of gravitational and other forces to hold it as a single whole. However, a supercluster of galaxies exists, and today such objects are considered quite real.
A bright point in the sky, but not a star
Continuing the search for something remarkable in space, let's now ask the question differently: what is the largest star in the sky? And again we will not immediately find a suitable answer. There are many noticeable objects that can be identified with the naked eye on a beautiful clear night. One of them is Venus. This point in the sky is perhaps brighter than all the others. In terms of glow intensity, it is several times greater than the planets close to us, Mars and Jupiter. It is second in brightness only to the Moon.
However, Venus is not a star at all. But it was very difficult for the ancients to notice such a difference. With the naked eye, it is difficult to distinguish between stars burning by themselves and planets glowing with reflected rays. But even in ancient times, for example, Greek astronomers understood the difference between these objects. They called the planets “wandering stars” because they moved over time along loop-like trajectories, unlike most night celestial beauties.
It is not surprising that Venus stands out among other objects, because it is the second planet from the Sun, and the closest to Earth. Now scientists have found that the sky of Venus itself is completely covered with thick clouds and has an aggressive atmosphere. All this perfectly reflects the sun's rays, which explains the brightness of this object.
Star giant
The largest star discovered by astronomers to date is 2100 times larger than the Sun. It emits a crimson glow and is located in This object is located at a distance of four thousand light years from us. Experts call it VY Canis Majoris.
But a star is large only in size. Research shows that its density is actually negligible, and its mass is only 17 times the weight of our star. But the properties of this object cause fierce debate in scientific circles. The star is believed to be expanding but losing brightness over time. Many experts also express the opinion that the enormous size of the object, in fact, in some way only seems so. The optical illusion occurs due to the nebula enveloping the true shape of the star.
Mysterious space objects
What is a quasar in space? Such astronomical objects turned out to be a big puzzle for scientists of the last century. These are very bright sources of light and radio emission with relatively small angular dimensions. But despite this, with their glow they outshine entire galaxies. But what is the reason? It is assumed that these objects contain supermassive black holes surrounded by enormous gas clouds. Giant funnels absorb matter from space, due to which they constantly increase their mass. Such retraction leads to a powerful glow and, as a consequence, to enormous brightness resulting from the braking and subsequent heating of the gas cloud. It is believed that the mass of such objects exceeds the solar mass billions of times.
There are many hypotheses about these amazing objects. Some believe that these are the nuclei of young galaxies. But what seems most intriguing is the assumption that quasars no longer exist in the Universe. The fact is that the glow that terrestrial astronomers can observe today reached our planet for too long a period. It is believed that the closest quasar to us is located at a distance that light had to travel over a thousand million years. This means that on Earth it is possible to see only “ghosts” of those objects that existed in deep space in incredibly distant times. And then our Universe was much younger.
Dark matter
But this is not all of the secrets that the vast space holds. Even more mysterious is its “dark” side. As already mentioned, there is very little ordinary matter called baryonic matter in the Universe. Most of its mass consists, as is currently suggested, of dark energy. And 26.8% is occupied dark matter. Such particles are not subject to physical laws, so they are too difficult to detect.
This hypothesis has not yet been fully confirmed by strict scientific data, but arose when trying to explain the extremely strange astronomical phenomena, related to stellar gravity and the evolution of the Universe. All this remains to be seen only in the future.
