The sun soaks planet Earth with light from 93,000,000 miles (150 million km) away. Therefore, it’s safe to assume that it’s a pretty big celestial body that is much bigger than our planet, at least. Here we consider how many times bigger the Sun is than Earth.
In fact, none of the 8 planets in our solar system are anywhere near the size of the burning crucible around which they orbit.
As the largest celestial body in our solar system, the sun has the greatest gravitational pull (27.9 times that of Earth). This is a prerequisite of any solar system. If it were not, planets wouldn’t orbit the central star.
But how much larger is the yellow dwarf star in the middle of our solar system than our planet? Let’s explore this fascinating question.
How Big Is The Earth?
The equatorial circumference of Earth is 24,901 miles (40,075 km). The circumference around the poles, known as the meridional circumference, is 24,860 miles (40,008 km). This variation is due to the slight flattening of the poles.
Earth is the largest terrestrial planet in the solar system and the 5th largest overall. Its size is only exceeded by the gas giants, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, and Jupiter.
How Big Is The Sun?
By contrast, the sun is 2.721 million miles (4.379 million km) in circumference. It has a diameter of 864,938 miles (1.3927 million km). As mentioned earlier, the sun is a yellow dwarf, which is far from the largest type of star.
Our sun is superseded by red giants, blue giants, and supergiants. Even though it seems large to us, on a cosmic scale, it’s not that big at all. That said, how does it compare to The Blue Planet?
How Much Bigger Than The Earth Is The Sun?
In terms of width, the Sun is 100 times larger than the Earth. That doesn’t sound all that impressive, but it has a mass of 330,000 Earths. If we packed as many Earths as possible inside the Sun, it would take 1.3 million Earths!
Believe it or not, Earth does pretty well on the density front, as 330,000 isn’t bad compared to some of the gaseous planets. In fact, Earth is the densest planet in the solar system due to its metallic core and rocky mantle. It has an average density of 5.51 g/cm3 compared to the Sun’s 1.41 g/cm3.
That said, where the gas giants have Earth well and truly beaten on the sun-size comparison scale is volume. For example, it would only take 1000 Jupiters to fill the sun and only around 1700 Saturns.
The Sun’s Matter
Want to hear something crazy about the sun?
It contains 99.8% of all matter in the entire solar system. That’s how massive the Sun is compared to the planets in the solar system.
What’s more, the sun’s core is an unthinkably hot 27,000,000 °F (5,000,000 °C). Earth’s core tops out at a comparatively cool 9392 °F (5200 °C). While the core of the Sun is hot, you may be surprised to learn that humans have created temperatures that are far greater. We have used particle accelerators to attain temperatures of about 7.2 trillion degrees Fahrenheit. That’s about 250,000 times hotter than the Sun.
How Many Plutos Could Fit In The Sun?
Okay, we’ve established how many Earths could fit in the sun, as well as how many of the two largest gas giants could fit in there. However, what about the planet so small that it literally got demoted to the rank of dwarf planet?
Well, since Pluto only contains about 0.01 Earth masses, it should come as no surprise that it would take more than 200,000,000 Plutos to fill the volume of the sun.
Are There Any Planets Outside Our Solar System That Are Bigger Than The Sun?
Only a few years back, NASA officially categorized Kepler-1658b (catchy, we know) as an exoplanet. This gargantuan mass is approximately 60 times larger than the sun. So, let’s do a little quick math…
If 1.3 million Earths can fit in the sun, that must mean that it would take roughly 78 million Earths to fill Kepler-1658b, which is absolutely mind-boggling.
How Many Earths Can be Contained in the Largest Known Star?
While the Sun is large, it is dwarfed by the largest known star, UY Scuti, which is a monster.
UY Scuti has a radius that is about 1700 times that of the Sun. At that size, the star has the same volume as 5 billion Suns. That means that it would take 6.5 quadrillion Earths to fill UY Scuti’s volume. 6.5 quadrillion written in numbers is 6,500,000,000,000,000. That’s a big number!
What’s The Largest Known Entity In The Universe?
Even UY Scuti has to bow down to the largest known entity in the observable universe. The Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall is a galaxy supercluster a staggering 10 billion light years long.
To put that into context, 1 light year is the distance light can travel in a single Earth year. As light travels at 186,000 miles per second (299,792,458 m/s), it can make some serious ground (or space anyway) in a year.
Now multiply this distance by 10 billion… it’s impossible even to comprehend.
To put this into even more context for you, the observable universe has a diameter of about 93 billion light years. As such, this single entity stretches out over more than 10% of the entire observable universe, which is straight-up bonkers!
How Many Suns Would It Take To Match The Length Of The Great Wall?
As mentioned earlier, the diameter of the sun is about 864,000 miles. This is a minuscule 0.0000001471 light years. If you divide the 10 billion light year diameter of the Great Wall by 0.0000001471, you get this monstrosity of a number…
679,809,650,000,000,000,000,000
We’re guessing you have no idea how you’d even express this number in words. We certainly didn’t, but after some research, we figured out that it’s…
679 sextillion, 809 quintillion, 650 quadrillion
And that’s how many suns it would take one after the other to run the length of the Hercules-Corona Borealis Great Wall.
And we can go ahead and tack another 10 zeros on the end to get the number of Earths it would take one after the other to run this cosmic goliath’s length.
Final Thoughts
There you have it — There are multiple different ways to measure “bigger”. Whichever you choose, the sun is a darn sight bigger than Earth.
The sun is 100 times larger than Earth in diameter, is 330,000 times more massive than Earth, and has a 1.3 million times greater volume than Earth.
But even our mighty sun is a mere fleck on the grander scale of the observable universe, as evidenced by Keplar-1658b, UY Scuti and the Great Wall.
What is evident is that there are vastly different scales in the Universe. We have explored the scales of Earth up to the largest structures in the Universe. What is amazing is that the scales for things smaller than the Earth is just as staggering. Years ago I found an online resource that I found very interesting. The Scale of the Universe illustrates the scale of things from the smallest measurement to the size of the observable universe.
Hi, my name is Jason Anderson, and I am a Physics Professor. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been fascinated with space, the universe, the moon, you name it. I spent hours and hours at the planetarium close to my hometown, wondering what else could be out in the universe.
Since then, I’ve been an avid stargazer and astronomer, and love nothing more than spending my time charting stars, observing planets, and finding constellations.
This is why I decided to start Telescope Guru. I only wish to share this fun pastime with the world. With this site, I hope to answer all of your questions relating to astronomy, telescopes, and stargazing.
