What Is The Largest Planet In The Universe?

Question

What Is The Largest Planet In The Universe?

7 Answers

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Answer 1

The universe is thought to be infinite, meaning that it has no end. Obviously, this makes it a bit difficult to know what's out there - as we don't even know exactly what's in our own solar system!

What's The Biggest Planet We've Found So Far?
As of October 2012, the biggest planet that has been discovered is HAT-P-1b. It's located over 451 light-years away from Earth, and is part of a constellation called Lacerta.

HAT-P-1b is a gas giant - like Jupiter, but bigger - and is thought to be around 3.6 billion years old. Compared to most planets that we know of, HAT-P-1b has a very low density.

What's The Largest Star That We Know About?
The largest star that's been found so far is called NML Cygni. It's a red supergiant, and has a radius that's 1,650 times bigger than that of our sun. NML Cygni is around 5,500 light-years away from Earth.

What's The Biggest Planet In Our Solar System?
The largest planet in our solar system is Jupiter, followed by the other gas giants, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.

Answer 2

Some of the answers below are very accurate about Jupiter, and deserve appreciation.

However, you cannot reasonably say that it is the largest anything in the universe without qualifying your answer.

You can say that Jupiter is the largest known planet in the solar system (which is a pretty small volume of space compared to the universe). Since the universe is believed to be an open universe based on 4-dimensional space-time, it is regarded as infinite.

Therefore you cannot say that anything is the largest, brightest, smallest, or fastest, without defining a parameter of the universe, e.g., the known universe, observable universe, 3-dimensional universe, etc...

Anyway, as of June 2007, the largest planet so far recorded in the observable universe is located about 1400 light years away (pretty close considering the size of the universe, or even our own galaxy, which is about 100,000 light years across).

This planet is called TrES-4, and is about 1.7 times the size of Jupiter. It belongs to a small subclass of "puffy planets" that have extremely low densities.

Answer 3

Nobody knows, as the universe is so huge.

Answer 4

WASP-17b is the largest planet known with 1.74 Jupiter radii.

Answer 5

Michael Thomas answered

The largest planet in the entire universe is unknown, and will likely be never known due to the extreme size of the universe.

Answer 6

Anonymous answered

The biggest planet (as far as we know) is HAT-P-1, which is 1.4 times bigger than Jupiter and is located about 450 million light-years away.

Answer 7

The largest planet in the universe is Jupiter.

Jupiter is a gaseous world as large as more than 1000 planet Earths. Its equatorial diameter is 88,736 miles. From pole to pole (north to south) it measures 84,201 miles.

Jupiter is a massive planet, but it spins at dizzying speeds. It spins once every nine hours and fifty-five minutes. However, it does take the planet Jupiter about twelve years to completely rotate the sun.

The appearance of Jupiter is quite unique. It appears to be a banded disk of turbulent clouds with all of its stripes running parallel to its bulging equator.

Its atmosphere consists of 89% molecular hydrogen and 11% helium. It also contains very small amounts of ammonia, methane, ethane, and water.

Jupiter is known for its large "red spot." The "Red Spot" is actually larger than the planet Earth. It is a large atmospheric storm that rotates around the planet every six days.

Winds in the "Red Spot" can reach 225 miles per hour.