is the sun biger than the stars?

Answer 1

The best way to compare other stars to the sun is to talk in terms of

Their size: how many solar diameters are they?
Their mass: how many solar masses are they?
Their brightness: how does their luminosity compare to the sun = 1?

Morgan-Keenan spectral classification
This stellar classification is the most commonly used. The common classes are normally listed from hottest to coldest (with mass, radius and luminosity compared to the Sun) and are:

Class Temperature Star colour Mass Radius Luminosity
O 30,000 - 60,000 K Bluish ("blue") 60 15 1,400,000
B 10,000 - 30,000 K Bluish-white ("blue-white") 18 7 20,000
A 7,500 - 10,000 K White with bluish tinge ("white") 3.2 2.5 80
F 6,000 - 7,500 K White ("yellow-white") 1.7 1.3 6
G 5,000 - 6,000 K Light yellow ("yellow") 1.1 1.1 1.2
K 3,500 - 5,000 K Light orange ("orange") 0.8 0.9 0.4
M 2,000 - 3,500 K Reddish orange ("red") 0.3 0.4 0.04

These classes are further subdivided by Arabic numerals (0-9). A0 denotes the hottest stars in the A class and A9 denotes the coolest ones. The sun is classified as G2.

Spectral types

Class O
Class O stars are very hot and very luminous, being bluish in colour; in fact, most of their output is in the ultraviolet range. These are the rarest of all main sequence stars, constituting as few as 1 in 32,000. O-stars shine with a power over a million times our Sun's output.

Examples: Zeta Puppis, Epsilon Orionis

Class B
Class B stars are extremely luminous and blue. As O and B stars are so powerful, they live for a very short time. They constitute about 0.13% of main sequence stars -- rare, but much more common than those of class O.(

Examples: Rigel, Spica

Class A
Class A stars are amongst the more common naked eye stars. As with all class A stars, they are white or bluish-white. They comprise perhaps 0.63% of all main sequence stars.

Examples: Vega, Sirius

Class F
Class F stars are still quite powerful but they tend to be main sequence stars. Their colour is white with a slight tinge of yellow. These represent 3.1% of all main sequence stars.

Examples: Canopus, Procyon

Class G
Class G stars are probably the best known, if only for the reason that our Sun is of this class. Supergiant stars often swing between O or B (blue) and K or M (red). While they do this, they do not stay for long in the G classification as this is an extremely unstable place for a supergiant to be. These are about 8% of all main sequence stars.

Examples: Sun, Capella

Class K
Class K are orangish stars which are slightly cooler than our Sun. Some K stars are giants and supergiants, such as Arcturus while others like Alpha Centauri B are main sequence stars. These make up some 13% of main sequence stars.

Examples: Arcturus, Aldebaran

Class M
Class M is by far the most common class if we go by the number of stars. All the red dwarfs go in here and they are plentiful; over 78% of stars are red dwarfs, such as Proxima Centauri. M is also host to most giants and some supergiants such as Antares and Betelgeuse, as well as Mira variables.

The red color is deceptive; it is because of the dimness of the star. When an equally hot object, a halogen lamp (3000 K) which is white hot is put at a few kilometers distance, it appears like a red star.

Examples: Betelgeuse, Barnard's star

Spectral types for rare stars
A number of new spectral types have been taken into use for rare types of stars, as they have been discovered:

W: Up to 70,000 K - Wolf-Rayet stars.
L: 1,500 - 2,000 K - Stars with masses insufficient to run the regular hydrogen fusion process (brown dwarfs). Class L stars contain lithium which is rapidly destroyed in hotter stars.
T: 1,000 K - Cooler brown dwarfs with methane in the spectrum.
C: Carbon stars.
R: Formerly a class on its own representing the carbon star equivalent of Class K stars, e.g. S Camelopardalis.
N: Formerly a class on its own representing the carbon star equivalent of Class M stars, e.g. R Leporis.
S: Similar to Class M stars, but with zirconium oxide in addition to or replacing the regular titanium oxide.
D: White dwarfs, e.g. Sirius B.

See link

Answer 2

Most quoted magnitudes are apparent magnitude, which is how bright the star appears to us. It is not directly related to the size of the star since stars further away from us will naturally appear dimmer. For example, the Sun is by far the brightest star in the sky at -27, but that is only because we are sitting on top of it in astronomical terms. Stellar magnitudes are quoted such that a magnitude 1 star is brighter than a magnitude 2 star, which is brighter than a magnitude 3 star and so on. Each whole number difference in magnitude equals approximately a 2.5x difference in brightness, so for example a magnitude 1 star is a little over 6.25x (2.5 x 2.5) the brightness of a magnitude 3 star. There is also absolute magnitude, which is how bright the star really is when distance is removed from the equation. This uses the same scale as apparent magnitude but describes how bright the star would appear at a standard distance of 10 parsecs (just over 32 light years). On this scale the Sun is a much more ordinary magnitude 4.83. Regulus has apparent magnitude 1.41 and absolute magnitude -0.51, although it is actually slightly variable. This brings up another aspect of the magnitude scale - really bright objects have negative magnitudes. That isn't anything to worry about. For the purposes of this scale, 0 is just another number.

Answer 3

Our sun is classified as an average star in roughly the middle of its life. There are stars that are smaller than our sun, white dwarfs for example. There are also stars that are much larger than our sun, red giants.

Eventually, as the fuel for nuclear fusion runs low, our sun will cool and expand to become a red giant. It will then become unstable and collapse to become either a white dwarf or a neutron star.

Answer 4

Our sun looks bigger than the stars only because it is so close to us here on Earth. Actually, our Sun is called a "Yellow Dwarf" star and is about average size as far as stars go.

Answer 5

The Sun is a star and is smaller than most stars. It looks big because it's closer to Earth.

Answer 6

The sun is a star. It looks so big to us because, relatively speaking, it's a lot closer to us than other stars. It's bigger than some stars, smaller than others.

Answer 7

The sun is a star. But they say our sun is smaller then average size.

Answer 8

the sun IS a star

Answer 9

the sun is a star and as stars go it is small

Answer 10

Actually the sun is a star. It is the closest one in our solar system.