All Suns are Stars

Did you know that the Sun you see rising in the eastern horizon and setting in the western horizon each day is a star?

Why does the Sun look different from other stars in the sky?

The Sun is  about 149,476,000  km from Earth, while Proxima Centauri, the closest star, is about 39,900,000,000,000 km away.

Things that you see up close look much different than things viewed at a distance. The Sun looks so big and round because in comparison to other stars, the Sun is very close to Earth.  In fact, after the Sun, the next closest closest star to Earth is about 268 times as far away as the Sun.

All Stars Are Not Suns

While it is true that all suns are stars, for a star to be a sun it has to have celestial bodies orbiting it. In other words, a sun is the center of a solar system.

For information about making solar system models to scale, see    SCALE MODEL: SOLAR SYSTEM