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Ephemeris: 06/23/2026 – How the Sun sizes up to other stars

June 23, 2026 Leave a comment Go to comments

This is Ephemeris for Tuesday, June 23rd. Today the Sun will be up for 15 hours and 34 minutes, setting at 9:32, and it will rise tomorrow at 5:58. The Moon, 2 days past first quarter, will set at 2:13 tomorrow morning.

Stars big and small, where does the Sun rank? It depends on the criteria. As far as mass goes, it’s pretty much in the middle. One can’t get stars much more than 20 times the mass of the Sun stars or stars less than a 10th the mass of the sun. As far as brightness goes, there are stars 100,000 times brighter than the sun and stars hundreds of times dimmer. All the stars that you can see with the naked eye, with very few exceptions, are all brighter than the sun intrinsically. As far as size goes from the largest and smallest, the sun ranks near the bottom, in a range from 1,000% down to 15% the sun’s diameter. Don’t feel bad about the sun’s ranking. Stars like the sun in mass, which determines those other qualities, live long enough for life like us to evolve.

The astronomical event times given in this blog are for the Traverse City/Interlochen area of Michigan (Lat 44.7° N, Long 85.7° W; EDT, UT – 4 hours) unless stated otherwise. Times will be different for other locations.

Addendum

A comparison of stars on the large side of the sun. Showing the sizes in order: Sirius, Pollux, Arcturus and largest of all UY Scuti. (UY is a variable star designation. It lies in the direction of the constellation of Scutum (the Shield) located north of Sagittarius looking toward the inner part of our Milky Way Galaxy.
This is a comparison of stars on the large side of the sun. There are stars smaller than the sun, however. Red dwarfs, which are less massive than the sun have diameters of maybe 10 to 15% that of the sun. White dwarfs, which are the end state of stars like the sun, are earth size or about 100th the size of the sun. Supernova explosions of massive stars produce either neutron stars of maybe 30 miles or so in diameter, or black holes whose size maybe a dimensional sport but whose event horizon is maybe a few miles in diameter. When the sun runs out of hydrogen in its core in five or so billion years from now it will bloat up to the size of Arcturus or larger for a short period of time, before shrinking down into a white dwarf. From ar.inspiredpencil.com
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