Oh my. This puts it all in perspective wonderfully...

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...

Related articles

• Here's an interesting size comparison of the terrestrial planets in our Solar System
• How much water really is there on Spaceship Earth?
• New exoplanet PH2 b is the second for citizen science project PlanetHunters.org

Now and then, along comes a solar eruption that just leaves you in awe...

Since NASA placed telescopes in space tasked with observing our Sun, our eyes have been opened to what an amazing, tempestuous place it is.

Coronal mass ejections see millions of tons of material blasted out into space—the making of beautiful auroras around our polar regions if we're in the line of fire. Sometimes powerful magnetic field lines prevent the material from escaping, and draw it back into the Sun's surface—usually at a sunspot. They're so huge they would dwarf our entire planet, and they're magnificent.

But now and then, along comes an eruption that just leaves you in awe...

This huge explosion actually happened back in July 2012, but NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Centre only released the video this week. It covers 9.5 hours, sped up to 3.5 minutes of gorgeous, lingering golden rain...



I'll let NASA describe it: