10 Hot Facts About The Sun

Our magnificent Sun.

Every morning people all over the world watch the Sun rise. Most of us don’t think much about it because … well, it’s just the Sun.

The neat thing about our Sun is that it is here every day. Thank goodness for that because without our Sun, there would be no life on Earth. Our planet is positioned exactly the right distance from the Sun to support life; not too close and not too far away.

10 Hot Facts About The Sun

The Sun is the perfect distance from the Earth to support all life on our planet. – Photo from NASA

Here are 10 really neat facts about the Sun:

1. If the Sun was the size of a beach ball, then the Earth would be the size of a pea.
2. Light takes approximately 8 minutes to travel from the Sun to the Earth.
3. The Sun rotates on its own axis, which takes approximately 25 days.
4. It takes 240 million years for the Sun to completely orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy; the Sun’s where it was about the time the dinosaurs appeared.
5. The diameter of the Sun equals the diameter of 109 Earths.
6. If the Sun stopped producing heat and energy today, it would take 50 million years before it devastated the Earth.
7. The Sun is only one star among 200 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy.
8. Five million tons of material is lost on the Sun every second.
9. The Earth receives 94 billion megawatts of energy from the Sun every day.
10. The Sun’s temperature at its core is 14 million Kelvin (25 million degrees Fahrenheit).

What an awesome star just 93 million miles from us.