• Question: Is the moon bigger in size than earth?

    Asked by anon-361455 on 30 Mar 2023.
    • Photo: Lucien Heurtier

      Lucien Heurtier answered on 30 Mar 2023:

      Nope, not at all! It looks big in the sky because it is quite close to us, but it is not that big.

      The Moon is about one-fourth (or a quarter) the size of Earth in width. Put another way, Earth is about four times wider than the Moon. That’s just about as wide as the United States or Europe.

      You may wonder how big is the Sun then, because the sun looks in the sky pretty much as big as the moon. However, the Sun is MUCH further away, so this is an illusion! It is 864,000 miles (1,392,000 km) in diameter, which makes it 109 times wider than Earth! When you look at pictures with the correct dimensions, the Earth and the Moon really look super small compared to the sun (https://public.tableau.com/views/SolarSystemtoScaleSmall/Size?:embed=y&:loadOrderID=0&:display_count=y&:tabs=n&:origin=viz_share_link)

      I hope that answers your question!

      Feel free to ask more, and don’t forget to vote for your favorite scientist 😉

    • Photo: Vicky Fawcett

      Vicky Fawcett answered on 30 Mar 2023:

      No, it is about 4 times smaller!

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