• Question: How Big is a average star?

    Asked by anon-267548 on 11 Nov 2020.
    • Photo: Bradley Young

      Bradley Young answered on 11 Nov 2020:

      Stars can be very different sizes, with radiuses from 10km to over 1 billion km. Our sun is fairly average for a star and has a radius of about 700,000km.

    • Photo: Sam Geen

      Sam Geen answered on 11 Nov 2020: last edited 11 Nov 2020 6:04 pm

      The average star is about the same size as our Sun, give or take, maybe a bit smaller. The number of stars of different masses is called the “Initial Mass Function” – over time this changes because more massive stars live less long. The most massive stars last a few million years, but the Sun will live for around 10 billion years and smaller stars can live a trillion years or so.

      In case you haven’t done it in science yet: “mass” is how heavy something is without looking at its effect from gravity. On Earth if you weigh 60 kg, your mass would be 60 kg. On the Moon you would weigh only 10 kg because the gravity is weaker, but your mass would still be 60 kg. Pushing you would still need as much force as it does on Earth, you would just float a bit more.

    • Photo: Zsolt Keszthelyi

      Zsolt Keszthelyi answered on 27 Nov 2020:

      Indeed, an average star is quite similar to our Sun but a little bit smaller. Those stars seem to be easier to form, whereas reeeal big and massive stars are much rarer. Interestingly, the average stars and the massive stars evolve differently, the Sun and similar stars will never explode but the massive stars in most cases lead to supernova events.

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