Saturday, October 31, 2026

Is our solar system large enough to contain all the stars in our galaxy?

 It's not as far-fetched a question as it seems, if we understand that our solar system is practically empty space.

It is estimated that the solar system would be filled with the volume of approximately 279 billion suns, and that the Milky Way has about 100 billion stars. If all stars were the size of the sun, the galaxy would not be large enough to fill the volume of the solar system.

The image shows the scale of distances between the Sun and just the first three planets. The note above states that the scale of distances is correct, but that the planets have been exaggerated by a factor of 50 and the Sun by twice their actual sizes.

However, the Sun is an average-sized star, and there are much larger stars.

This is the Sun compared to the planets.

And this is the Sun compared to some of the largest stars in our galaxy (The Sun is the smallest star in the picture).

Here compared to UY Scuti.

UY Scuti placed at the center of our solar system would reach beyond the orbit of Jupiter.

It's worth considering, then, how many stars of that size would be needed to fill the entire volume of the solar system.

I dare say the solar system would be too small, but not by much.