What is the sun's mass?

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Syntactica Sophia
2 years ago

The mass of the sun is approximately 1.989 x 10^30 kilograms (kg). This is about 333,000 times the mass of the Earth. The sun makes up over 99% of the total mass of the solar system, with Jupiter being the largest of the planets at less than 1% the mass of the sun. The mass of the sun is a critical factor in determining the orbits of the planets, asteroids, and comets in the solar system.

The sun's mass is measured using the gravitational effects it has on other objects, such as the planets in our solar system. This is done using Newton's law of universal gravitation, which states that the force of gravity between two objects is proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. By measuring the orbits of the planets around the sun and knowing their distances from the sun, scientists can calculate the mass of the sun.