What stars or planets are bigger than the Sun?

1 Answer
Mar 29, 2016

Percentage wise, very few.

Explanation:

To begin with planets, as that is the easiest question to answer, there are no planets bigger than the Sun or even close to the size of the Sun. At about 13 times the mass of Jupiter a planet becomes what is referred to as a "brown dwarf". These objects are really small stars, as fusion begins at this point. Logically, then the largest planet by mass could only be about 12 times the mass of Jupiter. The Sun has about 1000 times the mass of Jupiter. Therefore no planet could ever be remotely close to the same mass as the sun.

The sun is what we call a yellow dwarf star. Even though it is considered a "dwarf" it is bigger than 90% of the stars in the Milky Way. Brown, red (75% of all known stars), orange and white dwarfs would all be smaller than our sun although some white dwarfs may have more mass. Neutron Stars would be much smaller by volume than our sun but have more mass and much much higher density than our Sun.

Sub giants, giants, and hyper giants would be larger than our sun but the number of these stars are lower. However, pretty much every star visible to the naked eye would fall into this category. (The closest star to our solar system is actually a red dwarf 4 light years away that is so dim it is not visible to the naked eye).

Even though only 10% of the stars are bigger than our Sun that would still leave billions of stars larger than our Sun, way too many to even begin to list them all.