What is the smallest star with a known planet?
The smallest star known to hold a planet is DP Leo, whose radius is about 0.011 times the Sun's: a dead stellar core roughly the size of Earth. Everything about DP Leo →
| # | Star | Radius | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★ 1 | DP Leo | 0.011× the Sun's radius | 997 ly |
| 2 | ZTF J1230-2655 | 0.012× the Sun's radius | 609 ly |
| 3 | WD 1856+534 | 0.013× the Sun's radius | 80.7 ly |
| 4 | ZTF J1828+2308 | 0.013× the Sun's radius | 658 ly |
| 5 | GJ 3323 | 0.119× the Sun's radius | 17.5 ly |
| 6 | TRAPPIST-1 | 0.119× the Sun's radius | 40.5 ly |
| 7 | Teegarden's Star | 0.120× the Sun's radius | 12.5 ly |
| 8 | SPECULOOS-3 | 0.123× the Sun's radius | distance unknown |
| 9 | TOI-2267 B | 0.130× the Sun's radius | 73.5 ly |
| 10 | GJ 1002 | 0.137× the Sun's radius | 15.8 ly |
| 11 | GJ 3512 | 0.139× the Sun's radius | 30.9 ly |
| 12 | LHS 3154 | 0.141× the Sun's radius | 51.4 ly |
| 13 | Proxima Centauri | 0.141× the Sun's radius | 4.2 ly |
| 14 | G 261-6 | 0.153× the Sun's radius | 34.7 ly |
| 15 | LP 890-9 | 0.156× the Sun's radius | 106 ly |
| 16 | GJ 1061 | 0.156× the Sun's radius | 12.0 ly |
| 17 | YZ Cet | 0.157× the Sun's radius | 12.1 ly |
| 18 | GJ 9066 | 0.164× the Sun's radius | 14.6 ly |
| 19 | Kepler-42 | 0.170× the Sun's radius | 131 ly |
| 20 | G 192-15 | 0.171× the Sun's radius | 31.1 ly |
| 21 | CD Cet | 0.175× the Sun's radius | 28.1 ly |
| 22 | G 268-110 | 0.177× the Sun's radius | distance unknown |
| 23 | GJ 1151 | 0.178× the Sun's radius | 26.2 ly |
| 24 | Wolf 1069 | 0.181× the Sun's radius | 31.3 ly |
| 25 | LP 791-18 | 0.182× the Sun's radius | 86.4 ly |
Showing the top 25 of 4,431 that qualify.
The smallest stars with planets are white dwarfs, and a white dwarf is a strange thing to call small. It holds a substantial fraction of the Sun's mass in a sphere about the size of Earth, which makes it one of the densest objects in the universe short of a neutron star. A teaspoon of one would weigh several tonnes.
They are included here because a white dwarf is a star: the exposed, cooling core of one that has finished fusing and shed its outer layers. Brown dwarfs, which never fused at all, are excluded, so this ranking requires a measured mass above the hydrogen-burning limit. Finding planets around white dwarfs is a young field, and each one is evidence about what survives a star's death.
What is the smallest star with a known planet?
The smallest star known to hold a planet is DP Leo, whose radius is about 0.011 times the Sun's: a dead stellar core roughly the size of Earth.
How small is the smallest star with a planet?
About 0.011 times the Sun's radius, which puts DP Leo in the same size class as Earth while holding around half the Sun's mass.
Is a white dwarf really a star?
It is a stellar remnant: the core left behind when a Sun-like star runs out of fuel and sheds its outer layers. It no longer fuses anything and simply cools for billions of years. Astronomers still classify it as a star, which is why it belongs in this ranking and a brown dwarf does not.
How can a planet survive around a white dwarf?
Most cannot. The star's red-giant phase engulfs anything close in, so a surviving planet was either far out, or arrived afterwards: scattered inward by the gravity of a surviving outer companion, or built from the debris of the star's death.
Keep exploring: all records · the largest star with a planet · every star we hold