1. The Sun's core fuses about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second.
Inside the Sun's core, about 600 million tons of hydrogen are turned into helium every second. This process is like a huge power plant, creating a lot of energy. That energy is what makes the Sun shine and gives us the light and warmth we need on Earth.
2. It takes about 8 minutes and 19 seconds to reach Sun's light to reach Earth.
The light from the Sun takes about 8 minutes and 19 seconds to travel roughly 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) to reach Earth. So when we see sunlight, we’re actually seeing the Sun as it was over 8 minutes ago!
3. One day the Sun will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of Mercury and Venus, and render Earth uninhabitable.
One day, far in the future, the Sun will grow so big that it will swallow up Mercury and Venus, the two planets closest to it. When this happens, Earth will get so hot that it won’t be possible for anything to live here. This will happen billions of years from now as the Sun gets older and changes. After growing really large, the Sun will eventually shrink down to become a small, dense star called a white dwarf.
4. About one million Earths could fit inside the Sun.
The Sun is so enormous that about one million Earths could fit inside it. This shows just how massive and vast the Sun is compared to our planet.
5. The Sun is 10 times wider than Jupiter.
The Sun is about 10 times wider than Jupiter. This means that if you could line up 10 Jupiters side by side, they would span the width of the Sun. The Sun's enormous size makes it much larger than any planet in our solar system.
6. The Sun is a ball of gas: it has no solid surface.
The Sun is like a huge, glowing ball of hot gas. It doesn’t have a solid surface like Earth does; instead, it’s made up of very hot, flowing gases that are constantly moving around.
7. The Sun is 30,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way.
Yes, that's correct! The Sun is about 30,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This means that light from the center of the galaxy takes 30,000 years to reach the Sun.
8. Your weight on the Sun would be 27 times your weight on Earth.
If you could stand on the Sun (which isn’t possible because it's made of gas), you would weigh 27 times more than you do on Earth. The Sun’s gravity is much stronger than Earth’s, so things weigh a lot more there.
9. The Sun is traveling at 220 km per second.
The Sun moves through space at about 220 kilometers per second (about 490,000 miles per hour). This is part of its orbit around the center of the Milky Way galaxy. All the planets follow paths around the Sun, and their speeds can vary slightly depending on their distance from the Sun.
10. The Sun releases more energy in a single second than humanity has used over the past 6.3 million years.
Every second, the Sun emits enough energy to meet the entire world's energy needs for about 6.3 million years. This highlights just how immense the Sun’s energy output is compared to our current consumption.