The largest star that can be basically determined at present is the VY star in the constellation Canis Major. It is a red supergiant star 4,800 light-years away from the earth. Its diameter is about 2.8 billion kilometers, about 2,000 times that of the sun, and its volume is 1 billion times that of the sun. If VY Canis Major were placed at the position of the Sun, its edge would exceed the orbit of Saturn. But its mass is not too large, only about 40 times that of the sun.

There are also several huge red supergiants, probably similar in size.

The most massive stars currently discovered in the Milky Way are approximately 180 to 200 times the mass of the Sun. There are reports that there is a Tarantula Nebula in the Large Magellanic Cloud (an extragalactic galaxy), and there are a large number of newborn stars in the super star cluster R136. There are four stars in this super cluster that are extremely massive. Among them, the R136a1 star is more than 300 times the mass of the sun and is the heaviest star ever discovered.