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While not every single star in the night sky is a sun, the likelihood of there being >1 is still high.

What makes something a sun, according to you?
Like, a star of the same type?

> the luminous celestial body around which the earth and other planets revolve

I'd say a star that provides anything for the bodies revolving around it, even if it's just that gravity guidance, is a sun. A star solo-drifting off in space wouldn't be a sun in my mind, but I'm also not an astronomer so what do I know!

Sure, that's why I asked what you personally meant I guess, I'm not sure whether 'sun' is always used in astronomy with a super rigorous definition, although I've heard 'sun-like star' plenty as well.
Afaik it is thought that most stars do in fact have planets, but ofc I'm also not an astronomer lol

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Well naming a star "Sun" is probably the most important qualifier. What makes something a Jeffery, according to you?

Haha, I mean you're right. A Jeffery, like all concepts, is simply that which we habitually call a Jeffery. Which can be many different things I guess

Not all Karens are named Karen either ;)

There is only one Sun, and there are still stars during the day, just not visible by the naked eye

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This shit doesn’t even make sense. The sun is a star but that’s it. There’s only one sun

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Technically all stars that have orbiting planets are suns. While you are correct that the stars are there during the day you can’t see them therefore ops point still stands.

There are many stars but only one Sun.

“A star is called a Sun only if positioned at the centre of a planetary system. And because many stars in the galaxy also have planets orbiting them, this also makes them Suns.” Quote from the https://www.optics-trade.eu website

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A sun is a star that has planets orbiting around it. It's like how our moon is called the moon, but there are still tons of other moons

This is objectively incorrect, the Sun is the name for OUR star, there are not multiple suns.

"The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System."

"The star round which the earth orbits."

Couple of definitions

"Sun" isn't a label for a type of star or a different name for a star, it's just a name for the star we orbit, people often get confused as we call our moon, the moon, and other natural satellites, moons, some articles will say suns instead of stars to not confuse those with rather bad astronomy knowledge.

Our star is called the Sun and it's the only star with that name. Our moon is called Luna

Our sun's name is Sol. No one ever calls it that though.

Oh yeah, I'm dumb, don't listen to me

Sol Sanctum

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Sol is basically Latin for sun.

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Popular media has made it such that some people do call other stars ‘sun’ though.

e.g

Krypton’s red sun

tattoine’s twins suns

Romulan sun

Etcetc

So much so that I think many people would imagine standing on an alien planet, looking up at their version of the star the planet is orbiting, and casually say ‘damn the sun is sure hot today’.

Edit : I’m not saying people are calling every star as ‘suns’ interchangeably, I’m saying people call the star a planet is orbiting as the ‘sun’ of that planet.

Sun is basically english for Sol

Whatever planet you ate orbiting is "the sun".

If you find yourself in interstellar space or around another star you could refer to the sun as "my sun/star" or "our sun/star".

I have never heard that definition in my life, well, except on WalesOnline.. hardly a good source.

The Sun is the name of our star, the reason people use sun for stars is due to a misconception, thinking that sun is simply a synonym for stars.

Most dictionaries define the Sun as the star which the earth orbits.

If you're big into dictionary definitions, wiktionary has the following:

"A star, especially when seen as the centre of any single solar system"

And OED lists: "any star around which planets move"

The thing is, the usage of a word determines its meaning, not any one definition. And the word sun is in fact habitually used to mean 'star,' just read or listen to works of sci-fi I guess. If you pretend it's not, you're simply not capturing the full meaning.

It's has never been uttered realistically that way because nobody has ever been close to another star.

But it makes perfect sense in science fiction

Sol is the name. Sun is its role. The earths sun, tatooines sun, etc. Its the SOLar system.

So, technically a planet could have two suns if it’s orbiting a binary system?

Technically yes that would be correct

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"sol" is the latin word for "the sun". sun and sol are often used interchangeably, but both are just names for the star in our local solar system, not a "role" it's playing.

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Our moon is actually called "Moon" and our star is "Sun". Sol and Luna could be used as other names for them and people love to say those are their "actual" names, but even scientists don't ever use them. Moon and Sun just ARE their names in the present day, not just what they're commonly called

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Merriam-Webster has entered the chat

sun b: a celestial body like the sun : STAR

Where are all of these r/confidentlyincorrect down votes coming from. How can people be so confident about astronomy, but not know how to use Google or one of the many dictionary sites.

Nothing wrong with OP's use of "sun."

Edit: fixed link

It’s like that as well on the Oxford Dictionary and the Collin’s dictionary but I’m still getting downvoted for mentioning that it’s also like that in popular fiction :(

Apparently the sun as a common noun is not…accepted by everyone?

Since we aren’t talking about the Sun (proper noun version), are you talking about using ‘sun’ (the common noun version) as a replacement for any star, even though it’s not orbited by planets?

If so then yeah that’s it’s weird.

But isn’t ‘sun’ (as a common noun) already being used for a rather long time to describe stars with planets, in popular works, and have such characters in such works mention is as the ‘sun’ (common noun) of that planet etc?

I don’t think I’ve seen anyone here yet say that ‘sun’ is a straight synonym for ‘star’, especially lonely stars with nothing orbiting it.

Like, if you see binary stars and nothing else in that system, we don’t call those ‘suns’ right?

I think you assumed that I was using ‘sun’ as a synonym for every single star?

Anyone who says there isn't more than one sun in the universe I'm just gonna start saying earth's star is relatively cold today better leave my jacket at home to avoid getting starburnt.

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I think I’m seeing a few things happening in the replies.

1. People thinking I’m using ‘sun’ interchangeably for every star out there regardless if they have planet/s orbiting it.

2. People thinking I’m using ‘Sun’ the proper noun, instead of of ‘sun’ the common noun. (But I didn’t capitalize ‘sun’ anyway.

3. People who somehow have not come across the usage of ‘sun’ the common noun in popular media (I’m just so not sure of this one because it’s so common that it’s improbable they missed it.)

Edit : 4. People perhaps thinking that I’m referring to other stars as a sun relative to where we are, when it’s a ‘sun’ relative to the planets orbiting that star. And again common usage in popular media.

I’m as perplexed as you are.

Sigh....

4. Someone incorrectly thought they had a "gotcha on a technicality" moment -- and even selectively listed some definitions while omitting others that nullify his statement.

5. That comment made it to the top early after being jumped on by other people with similar "gotcha" desires.

6. Now the top comment is simply getting the reflexive subconscious upvotes that top comments get.

Laugh it off. :)

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Our Sun is called Sol by the way. That’s why it’s called the Solar System.

Everyone's being adequately pedantic about what constitutes a 'sun', but what about what it means to 'see'? Sunlight doesn't block light from stars from reaching our eyes, it just drowns it out. So in the day, our eyes receive light from all the extra-solar stars plus one solar star.

> Our Sun is called Sol by the way. That’s why it’s called the Solar System.

Yeah, and Earth is called Terra. Two names for the same object.

Yeah, “Sun” and “Star that acts like our sun” are technically both correct a according to many dictionaries including the Oxford English Dictionary, and Dictionary.com. However the latter also recognizes “Goblinmode” as a word. As incorrect phrases become common place they are eventually accepted, which is what happened in the case of the Sun. We have named many stars, ours not disclosed. We named our star “The Sun”, just as we named the largest known Star “UY Scuti”. At first calling stars Suns would have been the same as calling them Scutis, but since it has became more widely used and accepted it has become correct according to some reputable sources.

I know.

I would define it as a star with at least one planet.

Haha! That makes a kind of sense! So…you see more suns in the daytime than at night?

And this goes down the rabbit hole of

1. Nights where there are no moon - you see more stars because the moon occupies space in the sky

2. Days where the sun and moon are in the sky together - you see least stars because now there are two bodies taking up some space in the sky.

Sure. In that case there are plenty of course

Ah you make a point that we have to take into account the stars the sun is physically blocking. If there are at least two stars behind the sun (and whose light is not gravitationally lensed around it), then night is back in the lead.

Definitely. Generalization is one of the most common and well-understood types of semantic change. Even if it wasn't in dictionaries, whether or not a word is commonly used in a certain way is an observable fact lol. But yea, they are right to list that broader usage of course

Unless the moon is up and also blocks two stars!

Lol!

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A still more glorious dawn awaits, not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise.

A morning filled with 400 billion suns, the rising of the milky way

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

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How do you know what the other stars are called? Have you been there?

It probably wouldn't take me very long to find someone who unironically doesn't believe in the sun in this day and age, so don't take it too hard if someone disagrees with your verbiage regarding it

This shower thought makes sense though? There's nothing really wrong with what OP said, top comment just wanted to pick a fight. Probably had nothing better to do.

Omg you made me go google ‘the sun is fake’ and ‘flat earthers don’t believe in sun’ and other stuff lol.

We named them. We only used the most unimaginative names for our stuff, Sun, Moon and Earth.

By your definition blind people see, interesting.

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To continue the pedantism, I'd still argue that you don’t see the stars, even if you might see their light. If I stand around a corner from you and shine a flashlight on a wall you can see, you still don’t see the flashlight, just the light from it.

We’ve not named all the stars. Might be another one out there called sun

Everyone boo this man

We won't name another star "sun" or its equivalent in other languages, that would just be confusing for no reason.

The Moon is up in the day as often as in the night.

Stars are not uniformly distributed so the number varies during the (24 hour) day in some complex pattern.

The universe is infinite innit. Also who says we have to name it for it to be called the sun

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sol

Think about what you just said right now

Are you suggesting he’s been there lol