Everything you have ever seen by daylight started here.
The Sun is so big that about 1.3 million Earths would fit inside it. It holds 99.8% of all the mass in the solar system, so the planets are really just crumbs circling a giant.
Deep in its core, at 15 million °C, hydrogen is crushed into helium. Every second it turns about 4 million tonnes of itself into pure light and heat.
That light then gets stuck. It bounces around inside the Sun for thousands of years, maybe over a hundred thousand, before it finally escapes the surface.
From there the trip to Earth takes just over 8 minutes. So the sunshine on your face is ancient light that only just finished its journey.
The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old, roughly halfway through its life. It has plenty of shine left.
- Width
- 1,391,400 km
- One day
- 25 Earth days
- Temperature
- 5,500 °C at the surface · 15 million °C at the core
- 70 kg on Earth weighs
- 1,955 kg here
