[ithkuil]

I had the same thought: if there was another planet inside mercury's orbit, that would be the mostest closest planet to all the planets, stealing mercury's status, and so you keep iterating on that until you reach smallest and smallest orbits around the sun center of mass (which is inside the sun).

So, if you when you say "the sun" you mean the sun surface, then yes, the sun is always the mostest closest celestial body, to all planets

[manojlds]

Why do you complicate it talking of surface vs center of sun. Sun is sun. That's it.

[ithkuil]

just because it made it easier for me to reason about the fact that since the sun has some actual width it's exactly equivalent to a body that would orbit at that distance. If you frame it that way then it's rather obvious that the sun also fits the bill as the "mostest closest body" (albeit not planet)

[hgsgm]

The center of the sun has the same property, with simpler 0 size orbit.

[ithkuil]

it's not intuitively clear to me whether that is on average closer to the earth or if it's on average exactly as far as something orbiting around that center.

Furthermore, since the sun is also orbiting around the shared center of mass of the whole solar system, this displacement albeit very small, is still enough for me to not intuitively understand if it makes the sun's center of mass closer or farther away on average than the closest orbiting body to the sun