Our Sun Which Is 1.4 Light Yrs across, Is A second Gen Star. What was The Size Of Its Parent Star?

Answer 1

People, He is correct that the sun IS 1.4 light years wide although the correct way of saying it is that the sun’s system all the way out to the outer heleoshpere is approximately 1.4 light years wide (although I also have sources that say it’s more like 1.48).

Anyway, there’s much conjecture as to whether our sun is a second generation or a second gen that went nova near another older star, thus increasing the heavy element levels. This is because of the levels of uranium that’s been theorized to be within the Earths core. Based on this math it has been calculated that our parent star was probably anywhere from 7 to 8 AU in diameter (rather large but not outside that of what we can already see). It’s also been theorized that our sun in its infancy may have had a twin. NASA has done some research on this and they think they may have found a star that matches the age of our sun and also has fairly similar radiolinear isotope count within its spectral signature. Also the orbits of the two have been mapped and it looks like the two might have intersected over 5 billion years ago.

Answer 2

How the heck could the earth orbit the Sun in a year if the Sun was 1.4 light years across?!?!?!? the resulting orbital path would be 2*pi*((1.4 light years +93 million miles)/2). That would mean the earth moved faster than the speed of light to go more than a light year path in a year. Didn't any part of your question set off alarm bells when you asked it?

By second generation star in the sense of our sun, it was formed from gas and dust given off by nova of distant first generation stars. It is not a second phase in a life cycle either. The Sun is in its first phase now as a yellow, it will then go to red giant, then end up as cold white-dwarf.

Answer 3

The galaxies that formed differed in shape. Some were elliptical and some were spiral. They are enormous ñ trillions of miles wide. Sometimes the galaxies smashed into one another. Material from these collisions spread around and in certain instances combined. This led to the birth of the first stars. These early stars ended up providing the chemicals for the different galaxies. The smaller stars turned hydrogen into helium and then helium into carbon and on up to the development of more complicated elements. The larger stars made heavy metals like iron, gold and uranium. As time past these stars exploded they showered the galaxies with metal and chemicals. These supernova remnants scattered across space.

I found this from Yale's website:
"As new stars form they incorporated the heavy elements which could only come from earlier stars. We can therefore be pretty sure that our Sun is a descendent of some of these earlier stars, because in addition to hydrogen and helium our earth contains heavy elements that could only have come from previous stars. Since the Sun is 5 billion years old there has been lots of time for stars to form and die."

Hope this is helpful

Answer 4

You surprise me! Earth is only 8 light minutes away (= 1 AU). If the sun were 1.4 light years in diameter, we would be inside the sun as would be all the planets. Pluto is 40 AUs away and that is about 5.33 light hours away. (40 x 8 minutes)

Here is a table of all the largest bodies in the Solar System:

Rank Body Mean Radius (km) Mean Radius (vs. Earth)

1 Sun 696,000 109.25
2 Jupiter 69,911 10.97
3 Saturn 58,232 9.14
4 Uranus 25,362 3.98
5 Neptune 24,622 3.87
6 Earth 6371.0 1
7 Venus 6051.8 95.0%
8 Mars 3390.0 53.2%
9 Ganymede 2631.2 41.3%
10 Titan 2575 40.4%
11 Mercury 2439.7 38.3%
12 Callisto 2410.3 37.8%
13 Io 1821.5 28.6%
14 Moon 1737.1 27.3%
15 Europa 1561 24.5%
16 Triton 1353.4 21.2%
17 2003 UB313 1200 ± 50 19%
18 Pluto 1153 18.1%

Answer 5

Let me just add to what's already been said by others...

We can't know the size of any "parent star"--I'm not sure "parent" is a good word to use here. Certainly, it was a red giant, and loaded with the heavy elements that now make up our periodic table...and us. There IS a local void space in this region of our arm of the galaxy that seems to record its explosion. In fact, there are a number of these local voids between here and the Aquila Rift ( a big star-forming region). So, this appears to have been going on for along time. These voids contain centers of new star formation, or typically middle-age to young stars--these were formed when the shock wave from the nova compressed nebulae into new stars. Which is what we believe happened here, and eventually led to us.

Hope this helps.

Answer 6

As I'm sure you've been informed by other answers, the sun is only 850,000 miles across. A light year is about six trillion miles (6,000,000,000,000). To answer your question though, our "parent" star was a molecular cloud, and its size easily spanned light years. When it condensed, new stars formed. It is believed that some of our sun's stellar nursery siblings are in the group of stars that make up the Big Dipper.

Answer 7

It surprised me how little concept people have of space. yet you only need to look in the night sky and see that all stars and planets are pinpricks compared with the space between them.

For all their gigantic size, stars (all suns), can be measured in ordinary units of miles and kilometers (the sun is about 860,000 miles across) whereas a light-year is a convenient measure of space, where distances are too big to express easily in miles and kilometers.

I implore people to look and think before they express the first thing that comes into their minds, which is what I see often on this board.

I am not a practicing Christian, but I do think that one of the most important things he is credited with saying is "Look and ye will find".

Unfortunately, most Christians and others do not look.

Answer 8

No! The sun is 864,000 miles across, not 1.4 light years.

The size of the star that supplied the material for our sun is not known for certain, but it must have been between 1.5 to 4 times more massive than today's sun.

Answer 9

Putting aside the size of the sun there is no parent for our sun. It started out of unburnt clouds about 5 billion years ago and will live another 5 Billion years. But no parent sun and will never have a Son or daughter of its own.

Answer 10

The sun is about five light-seconds across.