• Question: what is the average size of a star?

    Asked by Jack to Eoin on 19 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Eoin Carley

      Eoin Carley answered on 19 Nov 2014:

      Hello Jack,

      Stars come in a whole variety of sizes. Our sun happens to be a very standard average sized star. The sun’s radius is 695,000 km. That’s really big!!! I’ll try and put it in context for you:

      So if you get on a plane in Ireland and flew non-stop around the world back to Ireland again it might take you about 80 hours to do it. Now, if you got on a plane somewhere on the Sun and flew non stop around the Sun back to the same spot, it would take you….1 year! Even at 500 km/hr on a jet it would take 363 days to make your journey. That’s how big the Sun is.

      Now the Sun is a tiny tiny speck compared to some of the giant stars in the universe. Take the biggest known star, VY Canis Majoris, is known as a hypergiant. It would take you 1195 years to fly all the way around it. If you started when vikings firsts came to Ireland, you’d only be completing your journey now 🙂

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