• Question: How big is the smallest star?

    Asked by anon-219238 to Nicolas, Emma, Declan, Bella on 20 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Bella Boulderstone

      Bella Boulderstone answered on 20 Jun 2019:

      Oh, that’s a really good question that I don’t know the answer. Stars do need a certain amount of mass before the hydrogen at the center that acts as their fuel stars to fuse into helium. Until they have that much, they can’t become stars.
      However, stars at the end of their lives tend to shed a whole bunch of their outer material and so shrink and fade for thousands of years.
      So I’m not sure!

    • Photo: Nicolas Bonne

      Nicolas Bonne answered on 20 Jun 2019:

      Stars aren’t my specialty either (i had to google this) but apparently the smallest star we’ve ever discovered is called OGLE-TR-122b and its a red dwarf. It’s the companion to a much bigger, and is only 20% bigger than Jupiter. If you put ten of these stars side by side, they’d be as wide as our Sun is.

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