1.
The Sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth.
2.
The Sun is over 4.5 billion years old.
3.
The Sun completes a rotation every 25-35 days. Of course, it’s always daytime on the Sun.
4.
The Sun’s mass is 333,000 times the mass of the Earth.
5.
The surface of the Sun is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500 degrees Celsius) hot, while temperatures in the core reach more than 27 million F (15 million C), driven by nuclear reactions. One would need to explode 100 billion tons of dynamite every second to match the energy produced by the Sun, according to NASA.
6.
The Sun has enough nuclear fuel to stay much as it is now for another 5 billion years. After that, it will swell to become a red giant.
7.
The Sun’s light reaches the Earth in 8 minutes and 20 seconds.
8.
The Sun is a star. There are lots of stars in the universe, but the Sun is the closest one to Earth, and it’s the only one in our solar system.
9.
Solar Eclipses, where the Sun disappears in the day, are caused when the Moon is between the Sun and Earth.
10.
There wouldn’t be any life on Earth without the Sun, it would be too cold for animals to live and plants need sunlight to create their food. The Sun also causes the seasons, currents in the oceans, weather and climates.
11.
The distance between the Earth and the Sun is an Astronomical Unit (AU).
12.
The Sun is made up mostly of hydrogen, followed by helium. Nearly all the remaining matter consists of seven other elements: oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, magnesium, iron and silicon.
13.
The Sun blows a steady stream of particles out from its outer layers, called the solar wind.
14.
The Sun orbits the centre of the Milky Way. It takes the Sun approximately 250 million years to complete a cycle. So far, the Sun has circled the Milky Way 18 times over its lifetime.
15.
The Sun is travelling at 220 kilometres per second. That means the Sun travels 7.33 times faster than the Earth. The Earth’s orbital speed is 30 kilometres per second.
16.
The Earth’s ozone layer absorbs most of the harmful UV radiation from the Sun. It’s not all bad, however. The Sun’s UV rays also have antiseptic properties.
17.
Your weight on the Sun would be 27 times your weight on Earth so if you weigh 75 kilos on earth, your weight would be 2,025 kilos on the Sun.
18.
Every 11 years, the Sun’s magnetic polarity reverses. The North Pole becomes the South Pole and the South Pole becomes the North Pole.
19.
The gravity of the Sun anchors the Earth and all the other planets together in the solar system.
20.
The Sun lies at the heart of the solar system, where it is by far the largest object. It holds 99.8% of the solar system’s mass and is roughly 109 times the diameter of the Earth, about 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the Sun.
