Steve Santilli, age 10, of Coventry, R.I., for his question:

IS THE SUN REALLY THE SMALLEST STAR?

Goodness knows who started this rumor. But it is not true. Far from it. Our friendly neighborhood sun is an average size star  not the biggest and not the smallest. It is the right size to swallow more than a million earth size planets   and so are almost 100 billion other average stars in our galaxy.

Among this starry swarm, naturally, there are some oddities. One group is called giant stars. These whoppers are bit enough to engulf the sun, plus a couple of the inner planets

Then there are a few supergiants, big enough to engulf most of the solar system. There also are dwarf stars, which are about the size of planets. A few of these are as small as the planet earth  which is more than a million times smaller than the sun.