How big is the Sun?

How large is our sun?
- Anonymous

Our sun is really huge! It is by far the largest object in our solar system, containing most of the mass in the solar system (99.8%). It is a G2 star and one of more than 100 billion stars in our galaxy. Its diameter is 1,390,000 km. and its mass is 1.989*10^30 kg. To compare this to the Earth, which is only 12,756 km in diameter and has 4.8*10^24 kg mass, the sun is 109 times as big and 414,375 times as massive!

(published on 10/22/2007)