Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Stars brighter and hotter than the Sun are rare, whereas substantially dimmer and cooler stars, known as red dwarfs, make up about 75% of the fusor stars in the Milky Way. [80] The Sun is a population I star, having formed in the spiral arms of the Milky Way galaxy.
The stars with the most confirmed planets are the Sun (the Solar System's star) and Kepler-90, with 8 confirmed planets each, followed by TRAPPIST-1 with 7 planets. The 1,033 multiplanetary systems are listed below according to the star's distance from Earth. Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Solar System, has three planets (b, c and d).
The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star that makes up about 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System. [26] It has an absolute magnitude of +4.83, estimated to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way, most of which are red dwarfs. [27] [28] It is more massive than 95% of the stars within 7 pc (23 ly). [29]
The Milky Way is approximately 890 billion to 1.54 trillion times the mass of the Sun in total (8.9 × 10 11 to 1.54 × 10 12 solar masses), [7] [8] [9] although stars and planets make up only a small part of this. Estimates of the mass of the Milky Way vary, depending upon the method and data used.
As of 2005 the star with the lowest iron content ever measured is the dwarf HE1327-2326, with only 1/200,000th the iron content of the Sun. [134] By contrast, the super-metal-rich star μ Leonis has nearly double the abundance of iron as the Sun, while the planet-bearing star 14 Herculis has nearly triple the iron. [135]
The eight planets of the Solar System with size to scale (up to down, left to right): Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune (outer planets), Earth, Venus, Mars, and Mercury (inner planets) A planet is a large, rounded astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. [1]
In ancient Greek, the planet was known as Φαίνων Phainon, [136] and in Roman times it was known as the "star of Saturn" or the "star of the Sun (i.e. Helios)". [137] [138] In ancient Roman mythology, the planet Phainon was sacred to this agricultural god, from which the planet takes its modern name. [139]
In the distant future, the gravity of passing stars will gradually reduce the Sun's retinue of planets. Some planets will be destroyed, and others ejected into interstellar space. Ultimately, over the course of tens of billions of years, it is likely that the Sun will be left with none of the original bodies in orbit around it. [4]