# Sun No Longer Largest Object in Solar System

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sun-no-longer-largest-object-in-solar-system/426891>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [November 18, 2007, 2:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sun-no-longer-largest-object-in-solar-system/426891 "2007-11-18T02:56:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 3

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**Author:** ![matt\_mcl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ab992/32.png) [@matt\_mcl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/matt_mcl)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sun-no-longer-largest-object-in-solar-system/426891/41 "2007-11-20T06:29:09Z")

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[QUOTE=OtakuLoki]  
Well, since that’s what most [nebulae](http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/assets/channels/education/ae/origin_nebula.jpg) are: [dust](http://www.danielmccauley.com/images/nebula012.jpg) [clouds](http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0503/horsehead_steinberg_big.jpg) bigger than the Sun, I mean, it just never twigged my radar. Many of the opaque nebulae are light years across.  
[/quote]

Right, but they’re not in _our solar system._

> [@](#):
>
> And, well, comets coming inside the orbit of Jupiter tend to be very violent locations. It was the Giotti probe that actually got some very grainy photographs of a cometary [nucleus in eruption](http://sci.esa.int/science-e-media/img/3c/i_screenimage_26428.jpg) during the most recent return of Halley’s Comet to the inner Solar System.

It wasn’t so much the explosion that freaked me out, but an explosion that created a cloud so mammoth as to be larger than the system’s primary. I mean, as I understand it, we started off with an object significantly smaller than the moon, and it erupted so violently as to create a debris field significantly larger than the sun.

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**Author:** ![OtakuLoki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@OtakuLoki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OtakuLoki)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sun-no-longer-largest-object-in-solar-system/426891/42 "2007-11-20T06:33:35Z")

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Fair enough.

I wonder how large the gas cloud created by the explosion on Apollo XIII was.

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**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\
**Post date:** [November 20, 2007, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sun-no-longer-largest-object-in-solar-system/426891/43 "2007-11-20T21:11:12Z")

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[QUOTE=Siam Sam]  
Rats! I was hoping that it WAS named after John Holmes and maybe because it had such a big appendage. “Comet Johnny Wadd” has a nice ring to it.  
[/QUOTE]

One of those special rings I see advertised in magazines, right?

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