Sun Facts

Sun is about 93 million miles from the Earth.

The amount of time light takes from Sun to reach the surface of the Earth is 8.3 minutes to be exact.

It weighs 330,000 times more than Earth.

The Sun is one among the 200 billion stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

The Sun is one among the 6000 stars, which is visible to naked eye from the Earth.

It has different regions, which rotate at different speeds. The equator region completes a rotation in about 27 days, but the polar regions take about 30 days.

The sun contains 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System.

Within the core of the Sun, the temperature and pressure of it is so intense that nuclear reactions actually take place.

The Sun's energy output, produced by the nuclear fusion reactions that takes place in its core due to high pressure and temperature, is approximately 3.86e33 ergs/second or 386 billion billion megawatts. This energy, released as heat as well as light, takes a million years to reach the surface of the Sun.

It is not a solid body.

Temperature at the core of the Sun is 15,000,000 K.

Pressure at the core of the Sun is 340 billion times Earth's air pressure at sea level.

It is 300,000 times heavier than the Earth.

The Sun emits low density streams of particles, also known as the solar wind. These winds blow through the solar system at 450 km/sec and consist mostly of electrons and protons.

The Sun revolves around our galaxy (the Milky Way) every 225 - 250 million years ( a galactic year).

Scientists estimate the Sun is about 4.5 billion years old. Although the Sun is consuming its hydrogen fuel at a rate of about 600 million metric tons each second, based on its mass the Sun will continue to shine at its present brightness for another 5 billion years.

Earth is 92.1% Hydrogen.

It will take 109 Earths to even fit across the Sun's disk, and the Sun's interior could hold over 1.3 million Earths.

In the furnace of the Sun, each second 700 million tons of Hydrogen are converted to 695 million tons of Helium and 5 million tons of energy in the form of gamma rays.

The corona which is the outermost layer of the sun, stretches towards the planets as far as Mercury, getting thinner all the time.

The force of gravity on Sun is 28 times greater than that of Earth's.

The density of matter at the Sun's core is about 150 times the density of water in the Earth.

The surface of the sun is called the photosphere and is made up of thick gases. You can't walk on it as you will sink into the thick hot gases.

In Spit Bergen, Norway at one time of the year the sun shines continuously for three and a half months.

Did you know our solar system is on the edge of a spiral arm called Orion's Arm, and is one-half to two-thirds of the way (28,000 light-years) from the center of our Milky Way galaxy?