Before we talk about some interesting facts about the Sun, letโs understand what the sun is. This name originates from the ancient Roman god of the Sun, Sol.
Our Sun is about 100 times wider than Earth, but itโs just an average-sized star. A star is a hot, bright gas sphere. Looking up at the night sky, you can see countless glittering stars.
But, tell me do you see the stars during the day? Of course! Maybe not the tiny twinkly ones, but the daytime light comes from our closest star, the sun.
The Sunโs surface is very hot, and its atmosphere gets even hotter. The Sunโs core is the hottest part of all of them, and the temperature inside the Sun can reach 15 million degrees Celsius!
Without the energy of sunlight, plants cannot grow, and without plants, animals have no food source.
What we have discovered is that other planets and bodies in our solar system may have no life, but the Sun has the same influence on them.
The planets, dwarf planets, asteroids, comets, and different items within the solar system orbit the Sun.
The most effective exceptions are moons, which, in turn, orbit planets, dwarf planets, or even asteroids. Still, moons also depend on the Sun, similar to every other object.
So letโs get into some fun Sun facts.
1. Is the Red Giant that Giant?
The sunโs surface is 11,990 times that of the Earth and almost 110 times that of the Earthโs diameter, and one million Earths can accommodate inside the sun, one of the most well-known facts about the Sun.
If you push it into a hollow sun with no wasted space, about 1.3 million Earths could fit inside, and it can take up to a million years to reach the sunโs surface.
Itโs big, but there are some bigger stars out there. Like, the largest star we know will almost reach Saturn when placed in our solar system.
Astronomers have discovered other 100 times larger and 10 times smaller stars than the Sun.
2. It Is aย Massive Part of The Solar System
The Sun rotates as it orbits the Milky Wayโs center. One of the most interesting Sun facts is that the sun accounts for 99.86% of the solar systemโs mass. And most of that last 0.2% is from Jupiter.
Therefore, the mass of the earth is part of the solar systemโs mass. We are almost non-existent.
The Sun is also almost a perfect sphere. Given the size of the Sun, the difference in diameter between the Sunโs polar and equatorial diameter is only 10 km, which is the closest to the perfect sphere observed in nature.
In the theory of the solar system, it was once believed that the sun rotates around the Earth. But in reality, the eight planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun, including Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune.
There are also dwarf planets such as Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, and Ellis. Earth takes 365 days to orbit the sun.
Hence, 365 days is a year. The distance between the Earth and the sun changes as the Earth moves in an elliptical orbit around the sun.
3. Blast From The Past
The sun began as a rotating cloud of dust and gas known as the Solar nebula. It slowly formed a huge center and became hot until the sun, and ever since its age has been about 4.5 billion years.
The Sun is currently in the stage of main-sequence stars and is slowly consuming hydrogen fuel.
But eventually, about 5 billion years from now, the Sun will enter the red giant phase and expand to consume inner planets.
It strips off its outer layers and then contracts back to a relatively small white dwarf.
4. Let there be Sunlight!
The Sun would be the 4th brightest. The average distance from the sun to the Earth is about 150 million kilometers.
Light travels at 300,000 km/s, so dividing by other light gives 500 seconds, or eight minutes and twenty seconds.
In simple words, the Sunโs light reaches the Earth in eight minutes from the Sun, which is one of the โquickestโ facts about the Sun. The energy produced by the Sunโs core is nuclear fusion.
Big question! Is the Sun on fire? The answer is NO. The Sun does not โburnโ; the sun is a very large sphere of gas, and it is shining because a process called nuclear fusion takes place at its core, which is one of the best sun facts.
The two main gasses that make up the Sun are helium and hydrogen, and thus the sun burns hydrogen.
The sun is composed of 92% hydrogen, 7% helium, and 1% other gasses. One in six billion of the sun is made of gold!
The sunโs gravity heats helium and hydrogen and causes them to fall toward the core, where gas particles combine to form higher-density elements.
5. The Sun has layers
One of the facts about the sun people donโt know much about is that there are three inner layers in the sun.
The Sunโs core has a radius of 86,000 miles and the next layer, the radiative zone, extends 319,000 miles from the core.
The third layer, the convection zone, extends 432,000 miles above. The visible surface is called the photosphere, the lowest layer of the Sunโs atmosphere, and heats up to a surface temperature of about 6,000 degrees Kelvin.
Underneath that layer is the convective zone, where heat moves slowly from the inner Sun to the surface, and cooled material falls back down in columns.
This region starts at 70% of the radius of the Sun. The transition region separates the chromosphere and the corona.
The corona and the transition region make up the third layer. Beneath the convection zone is the radiative zone. In this zone, heat can only travel through radiation.
The center of the sun extends from the center of the sun to a distance of 0.2 solar radii. Here the temperature reaches 13.6 million Kelvin, and the hydrogen molecule fuses with helium. Layer it up cause this is one of the coolest facts about the Sun.
6. Magic of Solar wind
The solar wind is a stream of particles that come from the Sun at about 1 million miles per hour and travel the entire solar system.
They can travel the solar system up to 450 kilometers per second. The interaction of solar winds with Earthโs atmosphere causes The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, other very beautiful sun facts.
Aurora Borealis, or northern lights, are beautiful waves of light that have fascinated people for thousands of years.
There is also an aurora, known as southern lights, as the Earthโs magnetic field redirects the particles to the poles.
The aurora is an atmospheric phenomenon that is considered to be the Holy Grail of sky-watching. Isnโt it just one of the most beautiful facts about the Sun?
7. The Yellow dwarf star
The sun is classified as a yellow dwarf. It is a main-sequence star with a surface temperature of 5,000 to 5,700 degrees Celsius.
The most useful term โyellow dwarfโ is to distinguish between G-shaped sun-like stars and yellow giants. Sun-like stars shine more than 90% of our Milky Way Galaxy stars.
The Milky Way is mostly composed of dark orange, red, and white dwarf stars, often the remains or remnants of G-type yellow dwarfs.
8. The Sun God
The sun is needed to grow food,ย and for all life on earth, so it makes sense for people to think it is God, one of the popular sun facts.
One of the most religious facts about the Sun varies by religion and tradition the Ancient Egyptians had a sun god called Ra, while Aztecs also had a God named Huitzilopochtli, and Hindus call the Sun God Surya.
9. Sunโs Magnetic Field and Solar Flares
The sun has a strong magnetic field, considering it one of the most powerful facts about the Sun. This field causes a temperature difference between the sunโs surface and solar flares.
From time to time, the Sunโs surface gas erupts far into space. These are called solar flares. Solar flares are created when the sun emits magnetic energy during magnetic storms. This is considered a sunspot on Earth.
Sunspots are dark areas of the surface of the Sun caused by magnetic fluctuations. They look dark because their temperature is much lower than the surroundings.
The sunโs gravity keeps the Earth and other planets that make up the solar system in orbit around it.
The rotation of the magnetic field occurs because the Sun spins faster at the equator than at high latitudes and because the interior part of the Sun rotates faster than the surface.
10. Tech take on the Sun
Bringing the facts about the sun to life, launched in 2018, NASAโs Parker Solar Probe is the newest addition to the sun-observing fleet.
The Parker Solar Probe is seven times closer to the Sun than in previous missions and has even gone as close to โtouchingโ the Sunโs surface.
The Parker Solar Probe has even sent valuable data and images as it entered the Sunโs outer atmosphere.
NASA and the European Space Agency have launched the Ulysses spacecraft to make the first observations of the polar regions.
Built by NASA and ESA and launched in December 1995, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory is the most famous spacecraft sent to observe the Sun.
NASA and the European Space Agency have launched the Ulysses spacecraft to make the first observations of the polar regions.
NASAโs STEREO spacecraft was designed to provide a 3D perspective of solar activity by observing the same activity of the Sun from two different perspectives, allowing astronomers to more accurately predict space weather.
Check out the best guide to planet Mars
To know more about NASAโs Parker Solar Probe, check out https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe
To know more about the ESAโs Space orbiter, check out https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Solar_Orbiter
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