With the discovery of extrasolar planets that are larger than some stars, I was wondering: how much mass is required to trigger nuclear fusion in a body, making it a star rather than a gas super-giant planet? If anyone knows the answer, please give it to me in Jupiter-masses so I can get a better idea. Thanks.|||lower limit brown dwarfs are hypothesized to be around 12-13 times more massive than jupiter. interesting thing about objects this size, generally, if you add mass to them, their radius gets smaller (gravity wins).
brown dwarfs don't maintain fusion, only fuse dueterium for a short period, and can sometimes be referred to as "failed stars"
i think red dwarfs, the lower limit for a star to maintain hydrogen fusion, is somewhere between 50-80 jupiter masses.
not sure where they fit in the radius scheme of things.|||it's not the size that determines it to be a star or not. If it's burning then it's a star. If it's not then it;s a planet or planetary object.. i don't know the sizes for the exact classifications sorry. however your answer lies here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_syste鈥?/a>|||I think you need at the very minimum 0.01 solar masses before you can begin to fuse hydrogen.
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