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Evolutionary Edge

Voices of an Emerging Movement for Conscious Evolution

July-August 2006

Comparative planetary and stellar sizes

How big are we here on Earth when compared to other planets, the sun, and some of the other stars?

I just received an email that included the following pictures, circulating anonymously around the Web universe. While I can't vouch for their strict accuracy, they seem good enough to wake up us novices to the amazing sizes of the planets and stars that surround us.

I couldn't get a verification response from a cosmologist friend before deadline, but I checked Google and Wikipedia and came up with this:

• Wikipedia has a great planetary comparison table and picture which I highly recommend (scroll down to "Accepted planets").
• To verify the star-size comparisons with our sun, I googled "Arcturus +diameter +sun". Arcturus is variously described on the Web as 16-28 times as wide as our sun (I'm not sure why the discrepancy), so the picture given below is at the upper end of that range. If you want another star-size comparison picture (and a lot of other interesting star data), check out this page from Indiana University.
• I also discovered an animated version of a comparable size comparison -- going up to even bigger stars!

If I get more accurate data than these, I'll change this page and note the correction in a future issue of Evolutionary Edge. In the meantime, enjoy the mind-boggling tour below.

-- Tom Atlee

Antares is the 15th brightest star in the sky. It is more than 1000 light years away.