How to Use solar mass in a Sentence

solar mass

noun
  • Our own sun is used as a unit of measurement in the Cosmos called a solar mass.
    — Mark Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 12 July 2018
  • Just one supernova can eject more than a solar mass of oxygen.
    — Ken Croswell, Scientific American, 1 July 2020
  • Neutron stars are very dense, having about a solar mass in a sphere just a few kilometers across.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 9 Aug. 2018
  • At about three solar masses, no one is really sure what happens.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 9 Aug. 2018
  • The black hole at the center of our own galaxy is just 4 million solar masses.
    — John Wenz, Popular Mechanics, 10 Apr. 2019
  • The first black holes could suck in about one solar mass of material from the horizon around themselves.
    — Quanta Magazine, 23 Sep. 2020
  • The smaller object, by contrast, was below three solar masses.
    — The Economist, 22 Aug. 2019
  • Seven billion years later, the core of the sun will shrink to its remnant, a white dwarf, carrying about half of the solar mass with the rest lost.
    — Avi Loeb, Scientific American, 30 Oct. 2020
  • The supermassive black hole at the center of that galaxy weighs 6 billion solar masses.
    — John Wenz, Popular Mechanics, 10 Apr. 2019
  • The object that forms instead crushes one or two solar masses down to an object with a diameter of about 20km.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 16 Oct. 2017
  • The rate of star formation in a galaxy like this can reach a few thousand times the mass of our sun each year -- compared to our own galaxy, which forms three solar masses in a year.
    — Ashley Strickland, CNN, 12 Dec. 2019
  • Most galaxies are thought to harbour a central supermassive black hole that weighs millions, or even billions, of solar masses.
    — Davide Castelvecchi, Scientific American, 23 Apr. 2018
  • In this approach, collapsing clouds in the early universe gave birth to overgrown baby black holes that weighed thousands or tens of thousands of solar masses.
    — Quanta Magazine, 6 Dec. 2017
  • Formed on the heavy side to begin with through the merger of stars, these grow to tens of thousands of solar masses before merging to create supermassive black holes.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 6 Sep. 2017
  • Its five-year orbit takes it in close proximity to its companion, a monster that could be more than 100 solar masses.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 6 Aug. 2018
  • And so the missing solar mass worth of energy was radiated out across the universe as gravitational waves.
    — Eric Betz, Discover Magazine, 1 June 2017
  • This is not because a black hole cannot be smaller than that in principle, but rather, five solar masses is the smallest a black hole which formed from a collapsing star would be expected to be.
    — The Economist, 20 Aug. 2019
  • And the end result is a neutron star just under two solar masses, with most of that material being an exotic form of matter of unbound quarks and gluons.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 24 Oct. 2018
  • This is believed to be the result of a 34 solar mass black hole colliding and merging with a 32-solar-mass black hole around 1 billion light-years away.
    — Robert Lea, Space.com, 1 June 2026
  • The missing material—three solar masses' worth of black hole—was converted to energy in the form of gravitational waves.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 27 Sep. 2017
  • The research team found the galaxy formed more than 1,000 solar masses a year in stars at its peak of activity, which is an extremely high rate of star formation.
    — Doyle Rice, USA TODAY, 6 Feb. 2020
  • Intermediate-mass black holes, weighing hundreds or tens of thousands of solar masses, could be expected to anchor the centers of smaller dwarf galaxies.
    — Dennis Overbye, New York Times, 6 May 2020
  • Instead, each grid element or particle stands for hundreds to millions of solar masses of stars and gas, depending on the resolution of the simulation.
    — Adrian Cho, Science | AAAS, 30 May 2018
  • However, these same theories also predict smaller halos with sizes between 1,000 and a billion solar masses.
    — Chris Lee, Ars Technica, 31 May 2018
  • Astronomers have long found evidence for small, star-sized black holes—up to about 10 times the sun’s mass—and supermassive ones, containing millions or billions of solar masses, in galactic cores.
    — Daniel Clery, Science | AAAS, 4 Sep. 2017
  • These could have as little as 1 percent of a solar mass, whereas the vast majority of black holes detected by LIGO so far weigh more than 10 solar masses.
    — Steve Nadis, Wired, 23 May 2021
  • Both of them are embedded in the Homunculus Nebula, the product of earlier eruptions that holds about 15 solar masses of material in its two main lobes, which roughly align with the stars' orbit.
    — John Timmer, Ars Technica, 6 Aug. 2018
  • But 4 billion light-years away, a tightly orbiting pair of supermassive black holes known as OJ 287 resides, with a ~150 million solar mass black hole orbiting one of tens of billions of solar masses every ~11-12 years.
    — Ethan Siegel, Big Think, 4 Aug. 2025
  • Meanwhile, a merger of two objects spotted via gravitational waves by the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA collaboration last year has intrigued scientists—because both objects might be less than a solar mass.
    — Jonathan O'Callaghan, Scientific American, 4 June 2026

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'solar mass.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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