• Question: how heavy is the sun ?

    Asked by issyyy to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 19 Mar 2011.
    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      I’ve looked it up and the sun has a mass of 1.9891×10 to the power of 30 kg
      that’s 198 followed by 28 zeros!!

      Mass is slightly different than weight because weight is dependent on gravity which changes depending on where you are in the universe!

      Eoin

    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 18 Mar 2011:

      Hi issyyy. There was a similar question earlier about how heavy the moon is. I am not an astrophysicist, but my understanding is that the important concept here is not heavy (because this is weight, which depends on gravity, and is different from planet to planet), but mass. The internet tells me that the sun has 330,000 times more mass than earth, but I haven’t seen the raw data to know for sure!

    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 19 Mar 2011:

      Hi Issyyy

      I think it’s something like 2 x10(to the power 30) kg. But don’t ask me how they weighed it!

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 19 Mar 2011:

      right firstly a guess then i’ll look it up! My guess is 1 times ten to the 25 kilograms – that’s 1 followed by 25 zeros kilograms! I’m guessing around this value because i think that’s about what the earth weighs, and the suns has got to be only hundred or so times bigger!!
      ok looked it up now and its 2 times ten to the 30 kilograms – 2000000000000000000000000000000 kilograms (2 followed by 30 zeros!). So my quess was 100000 times to small! whoops!

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