The Sun Holds 99.8% of Solar System Mass

The Sun contains 99.8% of all the mass in the solar system. Jupiter, Saturn, Earth, every moon, asteroid and comet together make up the remaining 0.2%.

The Sun is so heavy because of how the solar system formed about 4.6 billion years ago. A spinning cloud of gas and dust collapsed, and most of its material was pulled toward the center. That material became the Sun. The leftovers flattened into a disk and built the planets. It would take more than 330,000 Earths to match the Sun’s mass, and even Jupiter, the heaviest planet, has only about a thousandth of it. The Sun’s gravity holds every planet in orbit.