BellaOnline Forums Education Astronomy Stars – Ten Facts for Kids *new*

Stars are nuclear reactors. If a really big one took the Sun's place, it would swallow up the Sun and everything as far away as Jupiter. Yet others aren't much bigger than Jupiter. Big stars don't live very long and die in a blaze of glory. Smaller ones live for billions of years.

Stars – Ten Facts for Kids

Astronomy has a way of getting past you! Tuesday I put up my new article for Wednesday. And - lo and behold! - I read on Wednesday night that an even smaller star than the one I'd named had been discovered.

I'll be amending the article later, but meanwhile I'll tell you that now the smallest star ever measured is 2MASS J05233822-1403022. It was discovered in the 2-micron All Sky Survey data. It's actually smaller than Jupiter, but it has more mass than the planet. Its temperature is 1,800° C. That's hot in our terms, but not so hot for a star. The Sun's temperature is 5,600°. 2MASS J05233822-1403022 is about forty light years away.