Facts about the Sun
- The Sun is all the colours mixed together, this appears white to our eyes.
- The Sun is composed of hydrogen (70%) and Helium (28%).
- The Sun is a main-sequence G2V star (or Yellow Dwarf).
- The Sun is 109 times wider than the Earth and 330,000 times as massive.
- The Sun’s surface area is 11,990 times that of the Earth’s.
- The sun is a star. ...
- The sun is the closest star to our planet, which is why we see the sun so big and bright.
- The Earth orbits around the sun.
- The sun is way bigger than the Earth. ...
- It's hot!! ...
- The sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth.
What do you know about the Sun?
10 Need-to-Know Things About the Sun. Biggest. The Sun is about 100 times wider than Earth and about 10 times wider than Jupiter, the biggest planet. If the Sun were as tall as a typical ... STAR ATTRACTION. Sun Day. EXTREME SUN. Walking on Sunshine.
How old is the Sun?
What are some interesting facts about the Sun's gravity?
What is the Sun made up of?
What are 5 interesting facts about the sun?
Facts about the SunThe Sun accounts for 99.86% of the mass in the solar system. ... Over one million Earth's could fit inside the Sun. ... One day the Sun will consume the Earth. ... The energy created by the Sun's core is nuclear fusion. ... The Sun is almost a perfect sphere. ... The Sun is travelling at 220 km per second.More items...
What is 1 fact about the sun?
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 one million Earths could fit inside the sun.09-Jun-2021
What is unique about the sun?
The sun is completely gaseous. There is no solid surface. The sun is composed of 74 percent hydrogen, 25 percent helium and 1 percent other gases. The sun is composed of several layers.24-Apr-2017
How hot is the sun fact?
27 million degrees FahrenheitThe temperature of the sun varies from around 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius) at the core to only about 10,000 degrees F (5,500 degrees C) at the surface, according to NASA.21-Jan-2022
What are 10 fun facts about the sun?
Here are more fun facts about the sun, provided by the NASA Science Space Place:The sun is a star. ... The sun is the closest star to our planet, which is why we see the sun so big and bright.The Earth orbits around the sun.The sun is way bigger than the Earth. ... It's hot!! ... The sun is 93 million miles away from the Earth.More items...•10-May-2021
What makes the sun hot?
The core of the sun is so hot and there is so much pressure, nuclear fusion takes place: hydrogen is changed to helium. Nuclear fusion creates heat and photons (light). The sun's surface is about 6,000 Kelvin, which is 10,340 degrees Fahrenheit (5,726 degrees Celsius).01-Mar-2012
Is the sun on fire?
Answer: The Sun does not "burn", like we think of logs in a fire or paper burning. The Sun glows because it is a very big ball of gas, and a process called nuclear fusion is taking place in its core.
Will the sun eat the Earth?
The most probable fate of the planet is absorption by the Sun in about 7.5 billion years, after the star has entered the red giant phase and expanded beyond the planet's current orbit.
How many layers does the sun have?
three layersThe Sun is mostly made of hydrogen with smaller amounts of helium in the form of plasma. The main part of the Sun has three layers: the core, radiative zone, and convection zone. The Sun's atmosphere also has three layers: the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona.
Is the Sun hot or cold?
The surface of the sun stays at an incredibly hot temperature of about 5800 Kelvin all year long. The high temperature of the sun causes it to constantly emit prodigious amounts of thermal radiation in all directions, mostly in the form of infrared waves, visible light, and ultraviolet waves.26-Jul-2013
What is the Sun's brightness?
The Sun is by far the brightest object in the Earth's sky, with an apparent magnitude of −26.74. This is about 13 billion times brighter than the next brightest star, Sirius, which has an apparent magnitude of −1.46.
Which two elements make up the Sun?
Despite the controversy, everyone agrees on the basics: The sun consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, the two lightest elements. It generates energy at its center through nuclear reactions that convert hydrogen into helium.01-Jul-2020
Overview
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy mainly as visible light, ultraviolet light, and infrared radiation. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. Its diameter is about 1.39 million kilometers (864,000 miles), or 109 times that of Earth. Its massis about 330,000 times that of Earth, and it accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of …
Name and etymology
The English word sun developed from Old English sunne. Cognates appear in other Germanic languages, including West Frisian sinne, Dutch zon, Low German Sünn, Standard German Sonne, Bavarian Sunna, Old Norse sunna, and Gothic sunnō. All these words stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn. This is ultimately related to the word for sun in other branches of the Indo-European languagefamily, though in most cases a nominative stem with an l is found, rather than the genit…
General characteristics
The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star that constitutes about 99.86% of the mass of the Solar System. The Sun has an absolute magnitude of +4.83, estimated to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way, most of which are red dwarfs. The Sun is a Population I, or heavy-element-rich, star. The formation of the Sun may have been triggered by shockwaves from one or more nearby supernovae. This is suggested by a high abundanceof heavy elements in the Solar S…
Sunlight
The solar constant is the amount of power that the Sun deposits per unit area that is directly exposed to sunlight. The solar constant is equal to approximately 1,368 W/m (watts per square meter) at a distance of one astronomical unit (AU) from the Sun (that is, on or near Earth). Sunlight on the surface of Earth is attenuated by Earth's atmosphere, so that less power arrives at the surface (closer to 1,000 W/m ) in clear conditions when the Sun is near the zenith. Sunlight at th…
Composition
The Sun is composed primarily of the chemical elements hydrogen and helium. At this time in the Sun's life, they account for 74.9% and 23.8% of the mass of the Sun in the photosphere, respectively. All heavier elements, called metals in astronomy, account for less than 2% of the mass, with oxygen (roughly 1% of the Sun's mass), carbon (0.3%), neon (0.2%), and iron (0.2%) being the most abundant.
Structure and fusion
The structure of the Sun contains the following layers:
Core – the innermost 20–25% of the Sun's radius, where temperature and pressure are sufficient for nuclear fusion to occur. Hydrogen fuses into helium (which cannot itself be fused at this point in the Sun's life). The fusion process releases energy, and the core gradually becomes enriched in helium. Radiative zone – Convection cannot occur until much nearer to the surface of the Sun. T…
Magnetic activity
The Sun has a magnetic field that varies across its surface. Its polar field is 1–2 gauss (0.0001–0.0002 T), whereas the field is typically 3,000 gauss (0.3 T) in features on the Sun called sunspots and 10–100 gauss (0.001–0.01 T) in solar prominences. The magnetic field varies in time and location. The quasi-periodic 11-year solar cycle is the most prominent variation in which the number and size of sunspots waxes and wanes.
Life phases
The Sun today is roughly halfway through the most stable part of its life. It has not changed dramatically for over four billion years and will remain fairly stable for more than five billion more. However, after hydrogen fusion in its core has stopped, the Sun will undergo dramatic changes, both internally and externally.
The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of part of a giant molecular cloudt…