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The size of astronomy stuff

It can be difficult to understand how large (or small) astronomical objects are, so here are some handy comparisons to things on Earth. Here’s the size of Mars compared to the United States & Canada:

Mars vs USA

And here’s a neutron star nestled next to Liverpool on the northwest coast of England:

Neutron Star vs Liverpool

A neutron star also crams in over 1.5 times the mass of the Sun into a tiny ball maybe not much bigger than your daily commute to work, and the Sun is huge (see the size of the Sun later). So this thing is incredibly dense, so dense in fact that just a tea spoon of it would weigh over a billion tonnes, and if you could stand on its surface you’d feel the gravitational pull of 200 billion times that of our planet…not that you’d ever survive it of course.

(via @theclintmcleod)