User login

Star Sizes

Stars come in huge range of different sizes. Neutron stars can be just 20 to 40 km in diameter, whereas white dwarfs can be very similar in size to Earth. The largest supergiants, on the other hand, can be more than 1500 times larger than our Sun. With the Sun having a diameter of 695,000 km, this means that in the extreme cases, we are looking at a star of over 1,000,000,000 km.

Comparison of Star Sizes
Comparison of Star Sizes - Credit: Dave Jarvis

However, because supergiants are overly bloated stars in the final stages of their lifetime, they are far less concentrated (or dense) than your typical sun-like stars, and so wouldn't actually weigh a great deal more than the Sun. Indeed, the famous red giant, Betelgeuse, is around 800 times larger than the Sun, and yet only weighs round 15 times as much. With the atmospheres of large stars being so spread out, they tend to be a lot cooler and redder than your typical mid-life stars.