How many grams in a solar mass?

Answer 1

Too Big For Us To ImagineThe solar system really IS too big for us to imagine. It is FAR more than 9,000,500 miles. From the Sun to the Earth is about 93,000,000 (93 million) miles, or 1 A.U., as the original answerer pointed out. The average distance from the Sun to Pluto is much larger, about 40 times that Sun to Earth distance (or, 40 A.U.'s). In miles, the Sun to Pluto distance is usually cited to be around 3.7 BILLION. That's 3,700,000,000 miles..... Wow.

To give an idea of how IMMENSE the number of miles from the Sun to Pluto is, think of it this way: if you were going to start from 0 and count once per second, it would take you nearly 120 years to get to 3.7 billion. Or, how about this: if you wanted to drive to Pluto at a typical highway speed of 60 miles per hour, pack a few extra snacks, because it's going to take you about 7 thousand years. Pretty amazing.

BUT... the question is really asking about the distance to the "edge" of the solar system. Sun to Pluto is not really the size of the solar sytem; the solar system extends far beyond the planets. There are comets that are known to reach almost 1,000 A.U.,s from the sun. That's approaching 25 times farther out than Pluto, somewhere near 90 billion miles. This area is considered to be one valid "edge" of the solar system, and is called the heliopause.

Another valid "edge" of the solar system is called the Oort Cloud, but it's more controversial and questionable. Still, I believe most professional astronomers accept its existence. The Oort Cloud extends to about 2 light years, nearly halfway to the next closest star. In miles, that's between 11 and 12 TRILLION. 12,000,000,000,000 is a number whose magnitude is almost literally incomprehensible. To count that high, one number per second, would take 380,000 years.

Answer 2

The Sun is perhaps a little larger than the "average" star. The problem is that we don't know how many very small red dwarf and brown dwarf stars there may be, so it's difficult to come up with an accurate "average".

The big, bright stars are visible from almost anywhere in the galaxy, but red dwarf stars are not. In fact, the closest star to our Sun is the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri. Even though it is closest, it cannot be seen without a telescope!

Answer 3

A solar mass is equivalent to about 1.9885 x 10^30 kilograms. To convert this to grams, you would multiply by 1000 since there are 1000 grams in a kilogram. Therefore, a solar mass is approximately 1.9885 x 10^33 grams.

Answer 4

One solar mass is defined as being the mass of the Sun. This isn't particularly useful, except when we are comparing the masses of other stars to the one star that we see "up close and personal". Which, it turns out, is something that astronomers do every day.

Answer 5

Of the total mass in the solar system, the Sun is about 99.5%. Jupiter is half of the remaining part, meaning that all the other planets, moons, asteroids, meteoroids and everything EXCEPT the Sun and Jupiter total about 0.25% of the mass of the solar system.

Answer 6

Since we are currently traveling and don't have access to the real books that

we like to use for reference data, we just consulted a popular reference website,

and found the following numbers:

Sun's mass . . . . . 1.9889 x 1030 kg

Earth's mass . . . . 5.9742 x 1024 kg

If we adopt these numbers for the sake of discussion, here's are

a few of the things that we notice:

-- The sun's mass is equivalent to about 332,915 earths.

-- The earth's mass is equivalent to about 0.0003 percent of one sun.

-- If you were to say that "The difference between the mass of the sun

and the mass of the earth is identical to the mass of the sun.", you would

be 99.9997% correct. To put it another way: When compared to the mass

of the sun, the earth amounts to approximately a mote of a speck.

Answer 7

It is equal to the mass of the Sun, about two nonillion kilograms or about 332,950 times the mass of the Earth, 1,048 times the mass of Jupiter.

1.98892 × 1030 kilograms

Answer 8

A solar mass is a figure used to compare other stars with our own Sun. A solar mass has a value of one, comparing to the mass of our own Sun.

The mass of the Sun is 1.9891 x 1031 kg.

So if a star has a solar mass of 5 it has a mass of 1.9891 x 1031 kg x 5

Answer 9

A solar mass is the suns mass, which is around 2 x 1030 kg or 1,989,100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg. Rather than quote other suns or planets masses as kg, solar masses are used to easily compare their masses to our own sun. Same with the radius of the sun, we can use solar radii to measure other stars diameters, where one solar radius is the same as our suns.

Answer 10

The solar system is "the Sun, Jupiter and some small stuff". The Sun is 99.8% of the total mass of the solar system, and Jupiter is over half of the remainder.