CHARA Array false-color image of Polaris from April 2021 that reveals large bright and dark spots on the surface. Polaris appears about 600,000 times smaller than the Full Moon in the sky.Credit: Georgia State University / CHARA Array
CHARA Array false-color image of Polaris from April 2021 that reveals large bright and dark spots on the surface. Polaris appears about 600,000 times smaller than the Full Moon in the sky.Credit: Georgia State University / CHARA Array
Wow. Interesting. I can’t wait for more sophisticated optics to show us even more detail .
If it were our Sun, it would be as large as half of Venus’ orbit..............
“Polaris has a mass five times larger than that of the Sun.
Polaris has a diameter 46 times the size of the Sun.”
That is astonishing. 46^3 = 97,336.
If Polaris and the Sun had the same density, Polaris should have about 100,000 times the mass of the sun. Yet its mass is only five times that of the sun. That suggests its density would be 1/20,000 of the Sun’s density.
That sounds like a giant gas planet rather than a star. Could you even have a star with such a low density?
