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So, how many Earths can fit in the Sun? The answer is that it would take 1.3 million Earths to fill up the Sun. That’s a lot of Earths.
The Sun makes up 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System. And it’s the giant planets like Jupiter and Saturn which make the most of that remaining .14% of the Solar System.
If you’d like to do the calculation yourself, here are your numbers. The volume of the Sun is 1.412 x 1018 km3. And the volume of the Earth is 1.083 x 1012 km3. So if you divide the volume of the Sun by the volume of the Earth, you get 1,300,000.
Of course, the Sun is a fairly average sized stars. There are some enormous stars out there. For example, the red giant Betelgeuse has a radius of 936 times the radius of the Sun. That gives it hundreds of millions of times more volume than the Sun.
And the largest known star is VY Canis Majoris, thought to be between 1800 and 2100 times the radius of the Sun.
We’ve written many articles about size comparisons for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the Moon compared to Earth, and here’s an article about Saturn compared to Earth.
If you’d like more info on the Sun, check out NASA’s Solar System Exploration Guide on the Sun, and here’s a link to the SOHO mission homepage, which has the latest images from the Sun.
We’ve also recorded several episodes of Astronomy Cast about the Sun. Listen here, Episode 30: The Sun, Spots and All.