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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.
Since about half of all known stars form systems of multiple stars and because Jupiter is made of the same elements as the Sun (hydrogen and helium), it has been suggested that the Solar System might have been early in its formation a protostar system with Jupiter being the second but failed protostar, but Jupiter has far too little mass to ...
The regions with higher density of stars are shown; these correspond with known star clusters (Hyades and Coma Berenices) and moving groups. This is a list of nearby stellar associations and moving groups. A stellar association is a very loose star cluster, looser than an open cluster. A moving group is the remnant of such a stellar association ...
Representative lifetimes of stars as a function of their masses The change in size with time of a Sun-like star Artist's depiction of the life cycle of a Sun-like star, starting as a main-sequence star at lower left then expanding through the subgiant and giant phases, until its outer envelope is expelled to form a planetary nebula at upper right Chart of stellar evolution
The main sequence is sometimes divided into upper and lower parts, based on the dominant process that a star uses to generate energy. The Sun, along with main sequence stars below about 1.5 times the mass of the Sun (1.5 M ☉), primarily fuse hydrogen atoms together in a series of stages to form helium, a sequence called the proton–proton chain.
The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of part of a giant molecular cloud that consisted mostly of hydrogen and helium and that probably gave birth to many other stars. [125] This age is estimated using computer models of stellar evolution and through nucleocosmochronology. [13]
The closest encounter to the Sun so far predicted is the low-mass orange dwarf star Gliese 710 / HIP 89825 with roughly 60% the mass of the Sun. [4] It is currently predicted to pass 0.1696 ± 0.0065 ly (10 635 ± 500 au) from the Sun in 1.290 ± 0.04 million years from the present, close enough to significantly disturb the Solar System's Oort ...
Euler diagram showing the types of bodies orbiting the Sun. The following is a list of Solar System objects by orbit, ordered by increasing distance from the Sun. Most named objects in this list have a diameter of 500 km or more. The Sun, a spectral class G2V main-sequence star; The inner Solar System and the terrestrial planets. Mercury