Question: what is the biggest star known to man/woman

Sam Geen answered on 14 Jun 2013:

So (and yes, I did look this up on Wikipedia, sorry) the most massive star known is the romantically-named R136a1 (I don’t know if the women are hiding bigger stars from us men 😉 ). It’s 265 times more massive than the Sun. The biggest in terms of volume is NML Cygni (again, great name). The reason they’re not the same is because when stars get old, the outside of the star expands because as the inside of the star collapses as it stops burning hydrogen and cools down, it gives its energy from gravity to the rest of the star. This means that a star that’s the same mass grows to a bigger size as it gets old.

Hope this helps!