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How Big Is the Moon Compared to the Sun?

The moon and sun are two of the largest and most prominent objects in the sky (though, remember, never look directly at the sun). Comparing the size of them shows that they are very different things, though.

The Moon
- The moon is, of course, extremely large compared to most things on earth, having a mass of over 7 sextillion kilograms according to NASA. This, however, amounts to just less than 2 percent of the entire mass of the earth. The moon is roughly 50 times smaller than the earth.
The Sun
- The sun, in contrast, is much larger than the earth. NASA has found that the mass of the sun is almost two nonillion kilograms: a two followed by 30 zeroes. By volume, the sun takes up more than 1.3 million times the space that the earth does.
Comparison
- Thus, the sun is bigger, much much bigger, than the sun. It would take about 65 million moons to fill the same space as the sun. The moon is small enough that it is caught in earth's gravitation pull, but the sun is massive enough to pull the earth along in its orbit.

Astronomy