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Stephenson 2 DFK 49
Details
Stephenson 2 DFK 49 is an extreme red supergiant whose quoted size remains highly uncertain because its outer layers are diffuse and difficult to define. Even so, plausible estimates make it so enormous that its photosphere could approach or even engulf Jupiter’s orbit if placed at the center of the Solar System.
Stephenson 2 DFK 49 is famous for being enormous, but that is not the most interesting thing about it. What makes it remarkable is that it no longer fits the simple picture of a star as a clean, sharply bounded sphere. It is an extreme red supergiant, or perhaps already something beyond that stage, embedded in an environment shaped by its own instability.
The star shows strong infrared excess, signs of heavy mass loss, and even a bow-shock structure in infrared images. Together, those clues point to a star shedding material so intensely that its boundary becomes harder to treat as a neat surface. In a case like this, the question is not just how big the star is, but where the star ends and its surrounding outflow begins.
That is why Stephenson 2 DFK 49 matters. It turns the late life of a massive star into something messier and more interesting than a single number on a scale. This is an object that helps show how the most extreme stars can become dusty, transitional, and physically ambiguous before their final fate.
594million km
Visual creditscaleofspace.org / CC BY-NC 4.0
Key facts
- Category
- Stars
- Object class
- Extreme red supergiant star
- Composition
- Hydrogen and helium
- Scale fact
- ~1.6 billion kmdiameter
- Estimated age
- ~10–20 million years
- Temperature
- ~4,000 K surface
Scale context
Where Stephenson 2 DFK 49 sits on the full axis
By size on the journey, Stephenson 2 DFK 49 sits between Betelgeuse and VY Canis Majoris. The band below uses nearby Stars objects for context.
Shared physical scale
1.29billion km
Together, these objects make the size change around Stephenson 2 DFK 49 easy to compare at a glance.
Between the smallest and the largest, perspective is everything.
About
Scale of Space is a scroll-based journey through the universe, placing objects on a single logarithmic scale so you can compare size across an unbroken range.
Guides turn parts of that scale into curated essays, while focused views let you explore the same range through specific groups of objects.