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. Open the Sun 3D model to see what that mass is made of, from the core out to the corona.