10 Interesting Facts About The Sun
This post is part of the Did You Know? series
We all know about the Sun. It’s what provides us with the light and heat life (us) needs to survive on Earth. Here are 10 interesting facts about the Sun. Enjoy 
1. The Sun has structure. It is not simply a huge ball of fire. The surface of the sun is called the photosphere, and is dense with gases. Under the photosphere lies the convective zone, where heat moves to the surface (thus the name : convective), and cooler material falls back down. This layer makes up roughly 70% of the Sun’s radius. Now that’s big. Then comes the radiative zone, where heat is radiated up towards the surface. Then comes the core, where temperatures can easily be around 15,000,000 °C. This is where hydrogen and helium molecules are fused together, to create the light we see.
2. The Sun makes up about 99.8% of the weight of our entire solar system. Its mass is about 2 x 1027 tonnes, and is more than 300,000 times heavier than the Earth.
3. The Sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth. Light from the Sun takes just over 8 minutes to arrive at Earth. It’s interesting to note, therefore, that if the Sun suddenly stopped shining altogether, it would take us about 8 minutes to realize that.
4. The Sun is very wide. It has a diameter of about 1.4 million kilometers. To put that in perspective: the Earth has a diameter of about 13 thousand kilometers. It would take more than a 100 Earths to span the entire width of the Sun!
5. The Sun is about 4.5 billion years old. That’s way, waaaaaaay before human life came to be on Earth. The Sun is expected to shine for another 5 billion years.
6. As the Sun grows older, it gets brighter and hotter. Over the next few billion years, the Sun will heat up so much that all the heat will burn away life on Earth. But that’s only going to happen after a few billion years: we’re safe
7. The Sun is just another of billions of stars out there. Despite its huge size, it’s tiny: there are many other stars out there that are hundreds of times as large as the Sun.
8. The Sun is not a solid body, as many people think. 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.
9. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way galaxy at a distance of approximately 26,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy.
10. The Sun revolves around our galaxy (the Milky Way) every 225 – 250 million years ( a galactic year).
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There is a grammatical error in No. 3 of your list of 10 interesting facts about the Sun. You should not say “If the Sun would suddenly stop shining altogether, it would take us about 8 minutes to realise that” but “If the Sun stopped shining altogether, it would take us about 8 minutes to realise that.”
Hey Lainy,
Thanks for the alert. It’s fixed now
Hey,
Im bored so im just leaving a message
Im soooooooooooooo amazing.
Love life Grace
where does the sun go at sunset time.
pls reply
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sooooo cool
I hate this website
hi losers
HI you people im jamie i have no clue who you are so any way thank you for putting this up for the little children.
Jamie Fox
Dude this is aweoms info!
i meant awesome***
if u r a going to leave a remark on this website make it about the topic! if u just wanna talk to friends make a myspace or something
Hehe, thanks Steve and zoey!
this is the gayest website ever
Hey! Thanks for having these interesting facts. It helped me with my project. Do not fear, i did not copy word for word.. that is illegal! And siyab: get a life dude
ha ha ha! JUst kidding, your facts rock my socks.. Thanks!
i have a question.. do you think you can answer it..?
-Would you consider us the Sun`s moons?
-What is 2+2?
this website sucks get a life who ever said this is a good website stay on the topic man wats ur problem
@mz.forrest
Thanks for dropping by.
i am bored
Now, i told you to come home for dinna at eight child, where are yoU!?!
the sun is not the sun the hottest star. The hottest stars are white
jordan loves lucas 4 ever and always
hey i love lucas ray for ever and always
i can’t understand this??????????????
can you make about the genes
hi people i like facts about the sun
this stuff is awesome