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40 hot facts about the sun
The sun is at the center of the Solar System and is the center of our lives.
It marks the passage of time for us, gives us light to grow food and its rays nourish all life on our planet - allowing us to thrive.
It also produces some of the best visual effects in the sky.
Thinking about all that the Sun does for us, you can understand why some cultures worship it as a god.
And as you read these wonderful facts about the Sun, you will be amazed at our stars just like those ancient races.
The sun weighs 1,989,100,000,000,000,000,000,000 billion kg.
If the Sun was hollow, it could be filled with about 960,000 spherical Earths.
The surface area of the Sun is 11,990 times larger than the surface area of the Earth.
Our sun is only one of about 100 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy!
Many believe that there are nine planets orbiting the Sun in our Solar System - that is Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
There are also four other dwarf planets held in orbit by the Sun's enormous gravity.
The sun has the perfect size, shape, brightness, age, temperature and distance for life to exist on Earth.
The sun begins its life cycle like all other stars, like a cloud of gas known as the Nebula.
When Proto-Stars collapses, the gravitational energy is converted to heat and this causes Proto-Star to glow red.
At 4.6 billion years old, our Sun is in its Main chain and is considered a middle-aged star.
Once all of the hydrogen in the Sun has been burned, it will continue to burn all the Helium within it for about 130 million years.
After the Sun passes through the giant red phase, its outer layers will eject as the core continues to contract.
When this happens, the core of the Sun will retain its enormous mass, but will contain an approximate volume of our planet.
The enormous mass of the Sun makes up 99.86% of the mass in our Solar System.
The composition of the Sun is about 75% hydrogen and 25% helium.
The sun is surrounded by a plasma halo called "corona" - Latin for "crown".
However, there is a specialized type of telescope called the 'coronagraph' where you can observe things very close to the Sun like its halo, other planets and a comet watching the Sun.
With an average distance of 150 million km from the Sun to the Earth, light takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the Earth.
Although it only takes less than 10 minutes for the Sun's rays to reach Earth, it will take us millions of years to travel from the core of the Sun to its surface.
Although the average distance between the Sun and the Earth is 150 million km, the actual distance itself fluctuates every year.
If you make a journey to the Sun on an ordinary plane flying at its normal speed (about 644 km / h), it will take you 20 years to get there without stopping!
There is only a 10 km difference in the Sun's polar diameter when compared with its equatorial diameter.
Unlike the Earth that rotates every 24 hours, the Sun rotates every 25 days on its axis.
The Sun is 24,000 - 26,000 light years from the galactic center and it takes the Sun 225-250 million years to complete an orbit of the Milky Way's center.
While completing this orbit the Sun moves at 136.7 miles per second.
The energy in the core of the Sun is generated through nuclear fusion, when hydrogen is converted to helium.
Because Helium is lighter than hydrogen, every time hydrogen nuclei combine to form helium nuclei in the core of the Sun, it loses a small amount of its mass.
During the nuclear fusion that takes place inside the Sun, the core can reach an astonishing 150 million degrees Celsius.
The surface of the Sun is approximately 5,500 degrees Celsius, although this temperature appears cold relative to the core temperature.
When the Sun generates energy inside its core, the heat from this causes expansion.
The sun has an extremely strong magnetic field, and as a result it has many magnetic storms.
The number of Sun Spots that appear on the Sun varies significantly, with the highest number of Sun Spots visible about every 11 years.
The sun sometimes produces something called the solar wind, which is waves of charged particles such as protons and electrons that travel through the Solar System at about 450 km / s.
These solar winds are produced when the particle stream accumulates enough kinetic energy to escape the intense center of gravity of the Sun and the Sun's halo.
The solar wind can cause a number of different inconveniences that mankind experiences, such as radio interference, as well as how they often change the orbit of spacecraft.
The solar wind also produces some of the more beautiful cosmic phenomena, such as the glare tail of the comet and the Aurora Borealis or The Northern Lights.
Planets like Earth have strong magnetic fields that tend to deflect most of the charged particles that make up the solar wind when they approach the planet.
In human history, the Sun has played a great influence in many ancient religions.
Centuries ago, astrologers believed that Earth was the center of our Universe, with the Sun as a planet orbiting it.
If the bright surface of the Sun is removed, we will see only darkness.
