The sun is among the average stars. It is equivalent to one million Earths, meaning that within the sun, one million Earth-like planets can fit, and the area of Earth is tiny compared to the sun, making Earth appear as a speck of dust against the sun. An even more interesting point is that the sun is not the largest star in the universe and is an average-sized star; for example, a star named UY Scuti has a size about 1,700 times that of the sun, and a star named NML Cygni has an area about 1,600 times that of the sun, meaning that the star UY Scuti has an area about one billion seven hundred times that of Earth.
The star NML has an area of about one billion six hundred times that of Earth, which can be compared to the size of a grain of sand against the sea. The universe’s largest star is VY Canis Majoris, located five thousand light-years from Earth, with dimensions equal to eight billion times that of the sun. This means that the size of this star is equal to 80,000,000,000,000,000 times that of Earth!
In Surah Al-Waqi’ah, verses 75 and 76 :
So I swear by Mawaqi (setting or the mansions, etc.) of the stars (they traverse)
And verily, that is indeed a great oath, if you but know
. The above verse refers to the term “position,” which means the location or placement, or in modern terms, the coordinates the star occupies. The Quran’s reference to the rising and setting of stars may indicate astronomical distances and the vastness of the universe. These verses were revealed when modern telescopes did not exist and humanity was unaware of the astronomical distances between stars and their dimensions.
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