Largest object in the Solar System
- Who
- The Sun
- What
- 1,988,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilogram(s)
- Where
- Not Applicable
- When
- NA
The largest object in the solar system is the Sun (also known as Sol), which has a mass of 1.988 x 1030 kg (2.191 x 1027 US tons) and a diameter of 1,391,016 km (864,337 mi).
The solar system formed around 4.6 billion years ago, when a large molecular cloud (or nebula) collapsed in on itself. The bulk of the mass in this cloud was pulled into the centre, forming the star we know as the sun, while the rest coalesced into an orbiting disk around it. Over time the mass in the orbiting disk bunched together to form planets, moons and other solar system bodies.
The Sun accounts for 99.8% of all the mass in the solar system, with more than 1,000 times the mass of the next largest solar system body, the planet Jupiter.
Technically speaking, the sun is what's called a G-type main sequence star, or "yellow dwarf". As this name would suggest, the Sun isn't particularly large compared with other known stars, which range in size from around 1.2 times the size of Jupiter to 1,700 times the size of the sun. It has a core temperature of 1.57×107 Kelvin, which when combined with the immense pressure is enough to maintain thermonuclear fusion.