Mary Kay Democko, age 8, of Struthers, Ohio, for her question:

HOW BIG IS A STAR?

At night, the stars in the sky look like little bright eyes. But actually, even a small one is enormous. They come in different sizes, but all of them are millions of miles away. As a rule, those that look bigger just happen to be the ones that are closest. This is because things that are farther away tend to look smaller. So we cannot tell much about their sizes just by looking at them.

Our sun is actually a star. It looks so much bigger than the others because it is much closer to us. Actually, it is a medium size star. But it is more than a million times bigger than our great bi world.    A few stars are not much bigger than our earth. But there are giants and even supergiants. These whoppers are many times bigger than our medium size sun. Some are big enough to gobble up most of our solar system.