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Early attempts to classify the stars led some astronomers to split them into "Reisen" and "Zwergen," German words for "Giants" and "Dwarfs," these being large and small creatures of mythology. Later observations uncovered more sizes and these were named "subgiants," "bright giants," "supergiants" and "hypergiants."

Modern astronomy reveals that most stars are dwarfs. The Sun, incidentally, was original designated a dwarf star because it was significantly smaller that the giants and there was no "regular" size category. However, the Sun is, in fact, larger than 80% of all stars and is more properly referred to as a "Main Sequence" star.

Interestingly, allow the sizes of stars vary so greatly, their masses vary much less. Giants tend to be very "thin" stars, the very biggest being hardly as dense as Earth's upper atmosphere, while dwarfs can be amazingly dense.

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