Our Universe is simply huge, and it seems to us that there can be nothing bigger than the globe, but it is not. There are planets much larger and more massive. For the entire Universe, our Earth is just a grain of sand lost in it. The solar system is only one of the elements of the galaxy. The Sun is the main component of the Galaxy. Eight planets revolve around the sun. And only the ninth - Pluto - because of its gravitational forces and mass was removed from the list of rotating planets. Each planet has its own parameters, density, temperature. There are those that are made of gas, there are giant ones, small ones, cold ones, hot ones, dwarf ones.
So what is the largest planet known at the moment? In the spring of 2006, an event occurred that shook the theory of celestial bodies. In the Lovell Observatory (USA, Arizona) in the constellation Hercules, a huge planet was discovered, exceeding the size of our Earth by twenty times. Of the existing discovered to date, this is the largest planet in the universe. It's hot and like the sun, but it's stillplanet. It was called TrES-4. Its dimensions exceed the dimensions of the largest planet in the solar system - Jupiter - by 1.7 times. It is a giant gaseous ball. TrES-4 consists mainly of hydrogen. The largest planet orbits a star located 1400 light years away. The temperature regime on its surface is more than 1260 degrees.
There are a fair number of giant planets, but so far no larger one than TrES-4b has been discovered. The largest planet is larger than Jupiter by more than 70%. The huge gas giant could be called a star, but its rotation around its star GSC02620-00648 definitely classifies it as a planetary celestial body. According to the responsible employee of the observatory G. Mandushev, the planet is more gaseous than solid, and you can only dive into it. Its density ranges from 0.2 g per cubic centimeter, which is comparable only to balsa (cork) wood. Astronomers are at a loss as to how this largest planet with such a low density has the ability to exist. The planet TrES-4 is also called TrES-4b. It owes its discovery to amateur astronomers who discovered TrES-4 thanks to a network of small automated telescopes located in the Canary Islands and Arizona.
If you watch this planet from the earth, you can clearly see that it is moving along the disk of its star. An exoplanet orbits a starin just 3.55 days. Planet TrES-4 is heavier and hotter than the Sun.
The pioneers were employees of Lowell, and later astronomers from Harvard University and the Hawaiian observatory W. M. Keck confirmed this discovery. Scientists at the Lovell Observatory have an assumption that the largest planet TrES-4 is not the only one in this constellation, and that it is quite possible that there may be another planet in the constellation Hercules. In 1930, Lowell employees discovered the world's smallest planet in the solar system - Pluto. However, in 2006, Pluto, compared to the giant TrES-4, began to be called a dwarf planet.
