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Holmes Comet Coma Grows Bigger Than The Sun
coondoggie passed us a NetworkWorld article, as he does, noting that there is now an object in our solar system bigger than Sol. The Holmes comet has a huge coma, with a diameter scientists are now calculating to be larger than our own middle-sized star. "Scientists don't seem to have a guess as to how big it will ultimately become. The Holmes coma's diameter on Nov. 9 was 869,900 miles (1.4 million kilometers), based on measurements by Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and Pedro Lacerda of the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy. The sun's diameter, stated differently by various sources, is about 864,900 miles (1.392 million kilometers)."
I know you guys are right and all, but this is more of a fun factoid than some sort of scientific claim. Yeah, the sun is bigger, and has magnetic fields and winds and has tons more mass and everything, but as an amateur astronomer (very amateur), I still find it fascinating just how large the thing has become since exploding only a few weeks ago. That it's larger than the "visible" sun is, to me, just wild -- even if it is nothing but a huge bubble with very little substance.