61 Cygni A size and scale context

61 Cygni A is a nearby orange dwarf star in one of the sky’s most famous binary systems. The 61 Cygni pair became the first stellar system with a measured parallax, and 61 Cygni A is also a standard reference star for the K5 V spectral class. Read its scale context, comparisons, and journey links on the canonical object page.

JupiterGas giant planet·140,000 km

Luhman 16 BT-type brown dwarf star·~152,000 km

Proxima CentauriM-type red dwarf star·215,000 km

Lalande 21185M-type red dwarf star·543,000 km

61 Cygni AK-type main-sequence star·925,000 km

SunG-type main-sequence star·1.39 million km

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Stars

Lalande 21185

Lalande 21185 is a nearby red dwarf in Ursa Major, also cataloged as Gliese 411 and HD 95735. It is the brightest red dwarf visible from the northern hemisphere, yet it is still too dim for unaided eyes and is better known through telescopes, surveys, and its nearby planetary system.

Scale fact543,000 kmdiameter

Object class: M-type red dwarf star
Composition: Hydrogen and helium
Mass: ~0.39 solar masses
Temperature: ~3,550 K surface

Stars

61 Cygni A

Scale fact925,000 kmdiameter

Object class: K-type main-sequence star
Mass: ~0.70 solar masses
Temperature: ~4,545 K surface
Estimated age: ~6 billion years
Composition: Hydrogen and helium

Stars

Sun

The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System and the engine behind every climate and orbit within it. It fuses about 600 million metric tons of hydrogen each second, while photons created in the core can take roughly 250,000 years to work their way to the visible surface.

Scale fact1.39 million kmdiameter

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