Our Universe is simply huge, and it seems to us that there can be nothing more than the globe, but this is not so. 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 element of the galaxy. The sun is the main component of the galaxy. Eight planets revolve around the sun. And only the ninth - Pluto - was removed from the list of rotating planets because of its gravitational forces and mass. Each planet has its own parameters, density, temperature. There are those that are made up of gas, there are giant, small, cold, hot, 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. A huge planet was discovered in the Lovell Observatory (USA, Arizona) in the constellation Hercules, exceeding the size of our Earth by twenty times. Of the existing open today - this is the largest planet in the universe. It is red-hot and similar to the Sun, but it is still a planet. She was named TrES – 4. Its dimensions exceed the dimensions of the largest planet in the solar system - Jupiter - 1.7 times. It is a giant gaseous ball. TrES – 4 consists mainly of hydrogen. The largest planet makes revolutions around a star, which is located at a distance of 1400 light years. The temperature regime on its surface is more than 1260 degrees.
There are a sufficient number of giant planets, but so far not discovered more than TrES-4b. The largest planet in size exceeds Jupiter by more than 70%. A huge gas giant could be called a star, but its rotation around its star GSC02620-00648 relates it definitely to planetary celestial bodies. As the responsible employee of the observatory G. Mandushev said, the planet is more gaseous than solid, and you can only plunge into it. Its density varies from 0.2 g per cubic centimeter, which is comparable only with the balsa (cork) tree. Scientists-astronomers are at a loss: 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 through a network of small automated telescopes located in the Canary Islands and in Arizona.
If you observe this planet from the earth, you can clearly see that it moves along the disk of its star. An exoplanet revolves around a star in just 3.55 days. Planet TrES-4 in comparison with the Sun is heavier and has a higher temperature.
The discoverers were the staff of Lowell, and later astronomers of Harvard University and the Hawaiian Observatory WM 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 another planet can be in the constellation Hercules. Lowell employees in 1930 discovered the smallest planet in the solar system - Pluto. However, in 2006, Pluto, in comparison with the giant TrES-4, began to be called a dwarf planet.
