How big are stars?

Question

If you know, comparisons would help instead of measurements (ex: the size of two football fields)

Answer 1

Wow, Joy, great question!

Stars are bigger....uh, wait....same size....er, no.....smaller than our sun. Ah, that's it! Stars can be all three: bigger, same as, and smaller than our sun. So, you wanted some comparisons. OK. Let's use a scale model to help you visualize the relationships.

Imagine that the sun was a ball 1 ft. in diameter. The distance from the earth to the sun would be about 120 ft. If the sun were at home plate in a baseball field the earth would be at 2nd base. Mars would be about 1/2 way between 2nd base and the center field wall.

Now let's grab a really big star like Betelguese (pronounced like Beetle jooze) or Mira (pronounced like Mee rah), or Antares (pronounced like Ann Tar ease). They are so big in comparison to the sun that if you set them at home plate they would stretch out all the way to Mars, and beyond. As starts go, these are among the biggest in diameter.

So, if the sun is 1 ft in diameter how big is the earth? Oh, about 1/10 inch. Pretty small, I agree. There are stars this small: many white dwarf stars are about this size by comparison.

How big would Jupiter be at these scales? About 1.3 inches. There are so-called brown dwarf stars this size.

Now for the real midgets of the galaxy: neutron stars. In actuality, these they are about the size of New York City, or London, England. But at the scale I have chosen, they are too small to see with the unaided eye!

Quite a range in size, huh.

HTH

Charles

Answer 2

The diameter of the Sun is 100 times the diameter of the Earth. Other stars can be bigger or smaller. The biggest giant stars are bigger that the ORBIT of the Earth, and the smallest white dwarf stars are smaller than Earth.

Another comparison. If you made a true scale model, with a 10 inch basket ball as the Sun, then the Earth would be a BB, about 1/10 of an inch.

Answer 3

Many stars are much, much larger than our own sun. There is a star named Betlegeuse so huge that if it was where our sun is its outer layers would stretch all the way out beyond the orbit of Mars. You can see this star on a clear winter night. Find the constellation Orion and look for the fairly bright yellowish star in the upper left quadrant of the constellation --- that's Betlegeuse.

Answer 4

Imagine the earth the size of a green pea on your plate, most stars would fall between the size of a basket ball (roughly the size of our sun) or as big as the ball of water on top of the water tower in a small town (red giants on the verge of dying).

Answer 5

Many different sizes ours is called a small yellow star, but some are called red giants wich make our sun look like a marble on earth.

Answer 6

Joy: according to our own "Galaxy" there is a Red Giant
Called "Mars" as known < God of War> but see Crab nebula refer http://www.galaxy.crabnebula.com also it depends how 1000 x 1000 +567 -343 sums up mass studied by astronomers
http://www.galaxy.orionsbelt.com

Answer 7

Our sun is a star.about 333,000 times Earth's.Sun being the size of a basketball earth would be the size of a grain of salt

Answer 8

It also depends on what stage of their life cycle they are in when you ask. A super Nova get really huge, to say the least, right before it collapses in on itself .... hence black holes

Even in its final stages, our sun will enlarge all the way out to consume the terestial planets, except for mars.

Answer 9

Some probably range from the size of house to the size of our own sun. Maybe even larger.

Answer 10

star sizes varies,i dont know how,but it does.Sun is a star too,some stars are bigger than the sun,some are smaller.