Do stars (aside from the Sun) exist in our solar system?

Question

I know this may seem like a stupid question, but please bear with me.

Are there any stars (and I mean text-book stars) located within our solar system, aside from the Sun?

From Earth, the sun is quite large, considering that it's roughly 99 million miles away. After looking at the stars tonight, the brightest I could find (by my trusty naked eye) was obviously much, much less smaller than the Sun.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with my brain. I feel I'm being a complete idiot right now.

[insert shameful expression here]

So are the stars we see in the nightsky located within our solar system, or are they from distant galaxies, or both..?

Of course, then there is the question of how big exactly is our solar system....


I know it's a lot of questions. I've pretty much forgotten everything from grades 1 - 8, please forgive me.


- 15 years old, H.S freshman (beginning sophmore year.)

Answer 1

No, the star we know as the sun is the only one in our solar system. The other stars you see in the sky are in other systems, and may be in our galaxy or another one.

Answer 2

Go and sin no more my son (or daughter).

OK, the solar system extent is about a sphere of about 10-12 billion mile diameter. The sun with diameter of nearly 1 million miles is at the center.
The 8 main planets of the solar system, their satellites and the asteroids lies in a plane that includes a great circle of the sun's sphere. Pluto and some of the weird new objects found out there orbit in planes that are different from plane of the solar system.
Comets wander around all over the sphere, as do some other objects.

There are no other stars within this solar system. The nearest stars are in the constellation Centuri, which is visible in the Southern Hemisphere. These stars are about 24 trillion miles away. So, for stars which are about the size and brightness of the sun, which the brightest star in that constellation appears to be, appear to us as they do because they are 240,000 times further away that is the sun.

The largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter, is considered a "failed star" because it never collected enough hydrogen material when it was formed to start a continuing fusion-energy process as does the sun. If it had, it would be about 4 times larger than it is now, and much brighter than it is now, possibly the brightness of the full moon. It would probably be visible as a brilliant object about 1/12 the diameter of the moon in the day-sky based on its relative position with the sun. Also, if it had, the solar system we would have would probably be different from the current version.

Answer 3

The Sun is one of billions of stars in our galaxy. There are many stars larger than the Sun, and many smaller, but the only star in our solar system is the Sun. The other stars look small because they are very, very far away. If you could travel to other stars, you'd see that they look much like our sun from up close, and by "close", I mean 100 million miles or so. In a galaxy that is many thousands of light years in diameter, 100 million miles is a very short distance, equal to about 9 light minutes.

Answer 4

The Sun is the only star in our solar system. All the stars you seen tonight are located inside the Milky Way Galaxy. A solar system is a group of planets that orbit around a star. Other than the Sun, I believe the nearest star to us is 3 light years away. That's 3 years traveling at 186,000 miles per second. Pretty dang far! Some of those stars you saw tonight are thousands of light years away. Like the central star in Cassiopia is about 4900 light years away. But a few thousand light years isn't very far in astronomical terms. The edge of the universe itself is billions of light years away. Try looking up hubble deep field.

Answer 5

The solar system is named because it is a system of planets, planetoids, minor planets, asteroids, etc that all revolve around the one sun, our sun. The nearest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri, about 4.2 light years from our sun, meaning it takes light 4.2 years to travel from it to your eyes. On the other hand since our sun is only 93 million miles away, it takes but a few minutes for light to travel to your eyes.

The galaxy is 100,000 light years across, meaning it would take a beam of light 100,000 years to go from one side to the other. Thats quite big! There are many, many stars in our galaxy, billions! So most of what you see are other stars in our galaxy... however...

The universe contains billions of galaxies! Some of the stars you are looking at are actually the combined light from distant galaxies outside our own, the Milky Way. The closest galaxy to us is the Andromeda galaxy.

The universe is about 15 billions years old (give or take a few billion) and if light shot out from the big bang in all directions... However, does that mean it is 30 billion light years across?

Think of the universe as a gigantic loaf of bread with lots of little raisins inside. Each raisin is a galaxy. A single piece of sugar on each raisin is perhaps a solar system (if there were billions of sugar pieces on each raisin!).

But I digress, no there are no other stars in our solar system other than the one sun.

Answer 6

No. Only the Sun is in our solar system. The star you see is very far away and the Sun is not 99 million mile away. The light travel 186,000 miles per second and it takes eight minutes from the Sun to reach the earth. Do the math. Read more from the site below and you'll find most of the answer to your questions.

Answer 7

The sun is the one and only star within our solar system. All other stars you see are in the Milky Way Galaxy. There no intergalactic stars.

Answer 8

No. planet, solar system, galaxy, galactic cluster, super galactic cluster. Perhaps you are on drugs or had a stroke (or other mental damage)? the solar system is defined (roughly)by the volume where the Sun's solar wind dominates the charged particles present. So, this definition of solar system precludes a star like proxima centuri (3 light years away) from being included in our solar system, Plus its 3 light years away. But there are some binary and ternary star systems, Most stars you see are in our galaxy, but you can see other galaxies, too.

Answer 9

To put it in simple terms, the Solar system is comprised of the sun (Sol), and all of the known planets that orbit that star, i think that it ends at the Kuiper Belt (area beyond Pluto)

As for other stars, no, other stars are very far away. The closest besides the Sun is about 4 light-years from here (Alpha Centauri)

Answer 10

Our solar system,centered on the star we call the sun, is within the galaxy we call the Milky Way. The stars you see in the night sky are part of that galaxy. Hope this helped.