Phyllis Scott, age 9, of Huntsville ala.,, for her question:

What is the biggest star?

If it were hollow, a giant star could swallow millions and millions and still more millions of the small dwarf type stars. It could swallow our whole sun and almost our entire solar system along with its moons arid planets all in their places.

Our new telescopes are probing deeper arid deeper into space, and stars are being discovered all the time. Some of the dim stars turn out to be monster giants which look small and dim only because they are so far away. Not all of these far away giants have been measured, so we cannot say for surf which of them is the biggest. But 'we can report the biggest star so far discovered, and w£ can b£ sure that still bigger stars are waiting to be measured.

Astronomers suspect that a certain giant star is big enough to engulf our entire solar system, which is more than a billion miles from side to side. This whopping star is not far from Polaris, the pole star. However, we are not quite surf of its measurements, and future tests may prove that it is not quite such a whopper. At the present time, we cannot prove that this distant giant is the biggest star discovered.

But we can prove the measurements of another star which is big enough to gobble up the sun and. Six, perhaps seven, of its orbiting planets. The name of this giant is epsilon auriga, and it can claim to be the biggest star we know about.

Epsilon is usually the name given to the fifth brightest star in a constellation pattern. And our giant seems to be a dim midget among the stars. It is a star in the constellation auriga., the charioteer which rides over the late skies of autumn.

Astronomers tell us that this giant is actually a pair of twins. The bigger one is blue, the sma11er one is yellow., and, the twins swing in orbit around each other like a pair of dancers. The bigger twin is about 2000 times wider than our sun. If it replaced the sun, it would reach out past the orbits of mercury and venues, earth and mars arid then way on out beyond Jupiter and half way to the orbit of Uranus.

Epsilon aurigae is classed as a red super giant star. We know of several of these super giants, and astronomers think that they are young stars made from thin, glowing gases. Bright Antares is seen in the summer skies. This super giant is soave 300 times wider than our sun. Bright Betelgeuse is a winter star in the constellation Orion. This super giant is estimated to be 400 or 500 times wider than our sun.