About how big is a star?
Anyone can see that the stars strewn across the velvety night sky come in assorted sizes. But the sky is full of tricks that fool our eyes and things are not always what they appear to be. A star may seem big and bright only because it happens to be very close to us. Of all the stars we see, the glorious sun certainly seems to be the biggest and the brightest by far. But astronomers know better. Our sung they tell use, is just a medium star medium in size and brightness. It seems such a whopper because it is onl about 93 million miles away. Our second nearest star is some 27 million times farther out in space. And distance makes things seem smaller. This is true on the earthy where distant mountains peep up like molehills on the horizon. It is true in the heavens where nearby stars may look bigger than small, dim stars that actually are distant giants. Our eyes cannot distinguish the assorted sizes of the stars. Astronomers figure their measurements from data gathered by telescopes and
