text: what are the largest, heaviest, brightest, strangest stars known so far?   betelgeuse (in orion) is a red giant that is so large that its diameter is the size of the orbit of jupiter i.e. about 10 au acrooss (930,000,000 miles) and this is 650 solar diameters across.  but this is just a weedy titch compared to the biggest 3 which are  vv cephei 1900 solar diameters v354 cephei 1520 solar diameters kw sagitarii 1460 solar diameters  the brightest 3 by absolute magnitude (how bright they would look at a distance of 10 parsecs) are  (star, magnitude, luminosity compared to the sun =1) lbv 1806-20 −14.2 40,000,000  the pistol star   −13.2 16,000,000  cyg ob2-12   −12.2 6,300,000   the heaviest stars: the top 3 are:   eta carinae 150 solar masses  pistol star 150 solar masses  lbv 1806-20 130 solar masses   stellar mass is the most important attribute of a star. combined with chemical compostion, mass determines a star’s luminosity, its physical size, and its ultimate fate.  as to the strangest stars, wiki comments on a couple of binary star systems in auriga, the charioteer:  two peculiar binary stars, ε aurigae and ζ aurigae. ε aurigae is one of the strangest binary stars. the orbital period is about 27 years, with an eclipse duration of about 18 months. the visible companion is a yellowish (f-class) supergiant. the type of the other star is not known. ζ aurigae has a period of 970 days, the primary is a (k-class) supergiant and the secondary is a (b-class) main sequence star. both these systems present a rare stage of binary evolution, as the components are in a short and active evolutionary stage.