Talk:List of largest stars/Archive 5

Latest comment: 2 months ago by Atlantlc27Lol in topic Is WOH G16 a real star?
Archive 1Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5

Requested move 10 May 2024

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (non-admin closure) Safari ScribeEdits! Talk! 04:39, 19 May 2024 (UTC)


List of largest starsList of largest known stars – This page was recently moved unilaterally, without discussion. Its basis was an 8-year discussion, which is currently obsolete.
The page was moved to "list of largest known stars" on 2021-09-30 by Nussun05 (talk · contribs) with the following reason: "We don't know the exact largest stars in the entire universe, the list only consists of known large stars.", and he's right, we don't know all the stars in the Universe, the current title is more accurate. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 21:09, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

Comment: Since all votes until now were 'oppose' (very unfortunately), i will make arguments based on the article titles policy: Most reliable sources describe the topic as "largest known stars, largest stars known to mankind", etc, or at least emphasize the fact that it's just the largest known stars. See some links: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12], hence the title easily passes WP:COMMONAME. It has also a good level of precision, suficient to unambigously define its scope, which is the largest known stars. WP:TITLECHANGES also says that a stable name should not be moved without a good reason, which is the case here. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 18:39, 16 May 2024 (UTC)


  • Oppose: this looks like a conflict between precision and concision, per WP:CRITERIA. Since an article titled "list of largest unknown stars" would be empty, I think the 'known' here is redundant wording. It should remain as "List of largest stars". Praemonitus (talk) 22:22, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
    I really can't undertand this argument. In my opinion, putting the word "known" in the title is not redundant, for one simple reason: We don't know all the stars in the universe, in fact we only know a tiny fraction of them, so we can't just put "List of largest Stars" in the title, as that would be incorrect. WOH G64 is the biggest star on the list, by putting the title "List of largest stars" we would be mistakenly attributing that it is the biggest star. There may be billions of stars bigger than it, but we simply don't know. In my opinion, the proposed title is more informative, accurate and close to the truth. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 00:13, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
    Your argument is beside the point: it's the type of commentary that can be discussed in the Overview section. Hence the article in total will still cover all of the largest stars in the universe. This makes the 'known' redundant. Praemonitus (talk) 13:36, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
    Most people still don't read the "overview" section, so putting "known" in the title is important. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 10:55, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
Oppose I agree with Amakuru and Praemonitus here, "known" in the title is redundant. See also this old discussion linked in Amakuru's edit summary. SevenSpheres (talk) 22:25, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Oppose unless hardcore verificationism is policy let's avoid slapping 'known' things when we are clearly not going to talk about stuff that is not known—blindlynx 23:17, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
Oppose. The above votes sum up the situation accurately. Known isn't necessary because it's self-evident. I'm not sure why the prior discussion is deemed "obsolete", it formed the basis for the removal of known across the board and had a decent turnout. The reversal was unilateral and undiscussed.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:22, 10 May 2024 (UTC)
"Known isn't necessary because it's self-evident." Not really. This would be self-evident in lists where all objects that can be included the list are already known. For example, the list of largest cities does not need to be renamed to "list of largest known cities", because all the cities are already known, making the use of "known" redundant, and the title is already accurate enough for the article. The same applies to the List of Solar System objects by size, although there are unknown Solar System objects, the title is already precise enough and self-evident. The same does not apply to lists of astronomical extremes, for reasons shown in the answer to Praemonitus. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 00:53, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
There is no way to talk about things that we don't know about in principle. It's self evident that we can't talk about undiscovered things—blindlynx 13:09, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
This argument still appears meaningless to me. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 10:46, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
See for example Russell's teapot. If we have a list of objects in space, we can't list the objects we don't know in that might be in space. Primefac (talk) 11:28, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
The reversal was unilateral and undiscussed. but it was unopposed by more than 2 years and nobody reverted it. At this time, the page was constantly patrolled by many users, including an administrator and a page mover, which could move the page whenever they wanted. Furthermore, "List of largest known stars" used to be the title for nine years, from 2005 to 2016. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 21:24, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
Oppose per consistency with similar lists that are based on our best current knowledge including List of oldest trees, List of first human settlements, List of hottest exoplanets, List of most massive black holes, List of largest galaxies, etc. Dekimasuよ! 08:36, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Add a list of the largest stars by angular size

I am planning to add a section about the largest stars by angular size, because this would be the best article to include this information. The draft version is at User:InTheAstronomy32/Largest stars by angular diameter. InTheAstronomy32 (talk) 10:47, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Remove IRAS 04509-6922?

IRAS 04509-6922's radius varied too much (1027-2249). Should we remove the star or just that size? Hoanghao314159 (talk) 13:46, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The dusty region hasn't been modelled properly yet, which has sensitivity to extreme and inaccurate luminosities and effective temperatures. SpaceImplorerExplorerImplorer 07:03, 14 June 2024 (UTC)
There is a much better estimate of 1,300 solar radii. 21 Andromedae (talk) 20:58, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

HIP 7496

this paper gives 920 solar radii for this star, altough it is a bit outdated (from 2000). Maybe we could add this star? 21 Andromedae (talk) 18:29, 9 July 2024 (UTC)

... probably not, this more recent paper gives just 103 solar radii. 21 Andromedae (talk) 18:34, 9 July 2024 (UTC)
It has an uncertainty of 3,777 R SpaceImplorerExplorerImplorer 08:29, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Is WOH G16 a real star?

A while back I saw a comparison of extrasolar objects on YouTube.com that claimed there was a star called "WOH G16" and claimed the star was 4,115,000,000 kilometres (a.k.a 4.115 terameters) in diameter. I do not remember the exact video, and I cannot find any other media online about this star. Does anyone have any intel on this star or know if this star exists? Newaccount33333 (talk) 20:29, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Sure it wasn't WOH G64? Primefac (talk) 01:04, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
It probably is WOH G17. 21 Andromedae (talk) 01:13, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Yep. The video was probably from B-Rus Space, a comparisons youtuber. The Space Enthusiast (talk) 04:31, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes, you and 21 Andromedae are right. I just checked The Space Enthusiast’s guess of the star coming from b-rus space and it was in a star size comparison from 2022. Thank you guys very much for the help! Newaccount33333 (talk) 09:52, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Honestly he probably doesn’t do good research on the sizes he adds… Atlantlc27Lol (talk) 18:31, 11 August 2024 (UTC)
If you’re talking about WOH G17, that’s a foreground star. SpaceImplorerExplorerImplorer 07:36, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
Yes. I was. I didn’t know if I was at the time because I wrote down "WOH G16" when it was a digit off. Thank you very much for the help! Newaccount33333 (talk) 09:53, 10 August 2024 (UTC)
And, that message was not sarcastic. I don’t intend to put it that way. Genuinely thank you. Newaccount33333 (talk) 09:55, 10 August 2024 (UTC)