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How Big is Earth Compared to The Sun?

Updated: May 15

If you woke up this morning pondering this burning question, you will be pleased to know that we have several answers for you.


Though our Sun is an average-sized star, it is the largest object in our Solar System. In fact, it's so large that the Sun accounts for 99.8 percent of our Solar System's mass, so the mass of all the planets combined makes up just 0.2 percent of the Sun's mass.


The answer to the question how big the Sun is relative to Earth depends on how you measure, for example, by mass, volume, or diameter. Without detailing the extremely complex way that the answers were calculated (you will have to rely on the assumption that the BBC's Sky at Night crunched the numbers correctly), here's the lowdown:


An image of the Sun captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory
An image of the Sun captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory | Credit: NASA/SDO

The Sun's mass is 1,988,500x10^24 kg, and Earth's is 5.9724 x10^24 kg, so one Sun equals about 333,000 Earth masses.


By volume, the Sun is 1,412,000 x10^12 km^3, and Earth is 1.083 x10^12 km^3, so it would take 1.3 million Earths to fill the Sun (assuming the Earth spheres are squishy and pack in with no gaps!)


The Sun's diameter is 1,392,000 km (864,000 miles), and Earth's is 12,742 km (7,917 miles), so Earth could line up 109 times across the face of the Sun.


The surface area of the Sun is 12,000 times that of the Earth's.


And to round things off, you may be interested to know that our Moon is 400 times smaller than the Sun and 27 million times less massive. You would need 64.3 million Moons to equal the Sun.


Fingers crossed that one of these numbers comes in handy at your next pub quiz!

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