Good question! Yes, the sun is really a star. The sun is about 4.6 billion years old, and it's known as a "main sequence" star. That means that it is vigorously converting hydrogen to helium and releasing a lot of energy (some of that energy heats the surface of the Earth). The sun is not the biggest one in the Universe, but it's not the smallest either! The smallest stars in the Universe are called "red dwarfs". Some red dwarfs are only 1/10 as massive as the sun (NASA). The biggest stars are known as "hypergiants".

According to the NASA website, some hypergiants are more than 100 times as massive as the sun, and much brighter! I've included links to a couple of cool NASA resources. The first link below is for a NASA webpage that has a really neat video that compares the size of planets and stars. The second link is to a page with a lot of interesting facts about the sun.

Yes, our sun is just like the billions and billions of other stars that you could see at night. All the stars shine; so does our sun. All the stars produce heat and light; so does our sun. Most stars have planets or rocks, like our planet earth, that go around them; so does our sun.

Food for thought: our sun supports life on planet earth; so should many other stars?

Yes, definitely! If you were to get closer to other stars, they would look like the sun. But, the other stars are so far away that they look like tiny specks of light.

Yes, our sun is absolutely a star. Here's a fun song to learn about it.