Scale Comparison

Sun vs Aldebaran

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Aldebaran's diameter is about 45 times the Sun's.

Shared physical scale
41.2million km
Sun1.39 million km
Aldebaran62.8 million km
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Aldebaran is a red-giant-branch star about 45 times the Sun’s diameter.

Aldebaran’s expanded outer layers are cooler than the Sun’s surface. It appears among the Hyades from Earth but lies much closer and is not a member of that cluster.

Objects

Object details and sources

Stars

Sun

1.39 million kmdiameter

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System and the source of almost all the energy reaching its planets. It fuses about 600 million metric tons of hydrogen each second, and energy released in the core takes on the order of 100,000 years to work its way out to the visible surface.

Object class
G-type main-sequence star
Mass
~333,000 Earth masses
Temperature
5,772 K surface
Estimated age
~4.6 billion years
Composition
Hydrogen and helium
Visual creditSolar Dynamics Observatory 2024 / NASA / SDO / HMI science team / Public domainSource: Wikimedia Commons
Stars

Aldebaran

62.8 million kmdiameter

Aldebaran is a red giant branch star in Taurus with a cool orange surface and a diameter about 45 times the Sun’s. It lies in front of the Hyades cluster by chance, so it appears to sit among the bull’s-head stars without actually belonging to that group.

Object class
K-type red giant star
Mass
~1.03 solar masses
Host
Aldebaran system
Estimated age
~6.4 billion years
Composition
Hydrogen and helium
Temperature
~3,900 K surface
Visual creditscaleofspace.org / CC BY-NC 4.0

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