Why it became famous

UY Scuti's estimated radius can be over a thousand times the Sun's radius, placing it in the public imagination as a record-breaking star.

Those estimates depend on distance, temperature, dust, and model choices.

Is it the biggest star?

It is one of the largest candidates, but not a guaranteed permanent number one. Other stars can appear larger depending on the measurement set used.

A scientifically honest page says it is among the largest known stars, not definitely the largest.

The useful scale comparison

If a star of this scale replaced the Sun, its outer layers could extend toward Jupiter's orbit. That is the intuition people search for, and it should be paired with uncertainty.