So just how big is the Sun?
Pretty hard to go by this gorgeous picture for summing it up in one:
Yes—those little specs right over on the left side are the four
terrestrial planets.
It was done by Bob Riddle, and he has a bunch of
related information over on his blog.
Via Brad Snowder (@skywise88).
On the topic of comparisons, did you know that
the mass of Jupiter is some 2.4 times the combined mass of every other thing in our
Solar System—excluding the Sun. Every planet, moon, ring, asteroid and dust mote. But even that pales next to the Sun. But wait: even the Sun pales next to the size of red super giant
Betelguese, which is in our skies at present, in the
Orion constellation. If Betelguese was where our Sun is, its surface would be right out past Jupiter's orbit (which is 5.2
Au, or 5.2 times the distance from Earth to the Sun, or 816,520,800 kilometres). Betelguese's radius varies between 950 and 1200 million kilometres. Now that's big...
