40 Interesting & Unknown Sun Facts
In many cultures, the Sun is worshiped because it infuses life and divinity. Just like sunshine makes you lively and brings a ray of hope, let these Sun Facts jazz up your mood and charge your batteries for the day.
1. The Sun is over 4.5 billion years old. It started as a cloud of dust and gas. It slowly formed a massive center and gained heat.
2. Many ancient cultures thought the Sun was a god. The solar system is named for the ancient Roman word, Sol.
3. The Sun is a star found at the center of the Solar System.
4. The Sun makes up around 99.86% of the Solar System’s mass.
5. Helioseismology is the study of the interior of the Sun.
6. The diameter of the Sun is about 110 times wider than Earth’s.
7. The sun is studied using many satellites, the main one being the SOHO.
8. The Sun’s surface temperature is around 9941 degrees Fahrenheit.
9. The core of the Sun is around 13600000 degrees Celsius.
10. The Sun generates huge amounts of energy by combining hydrogen nuclei into helium. This process is called nuclear fusion.
11. Around 74% of the Sun’s mass is made up of hydrogen.
12. Light from the Sun reaches Earth in around 8 minutes.
13. The weight of the sun is a mind-boggling 4,385,214,857,119,399,823,317,774,893,056 pounds!
14. It is 30,000 light years away from the center of The Milky Way.
15. The Sun is one million times bigger than the Earth.
16. The gravity of the Sun is 28 times stronger than Earth’s gravity.
17. The Sun produces a solar wind which contains charged particles such as electrons and protons.
18. The bubble that surrounds the Sun and the solar system is called the heliosphere.
19. Sunspots are areas of the Sun that are cooler than the rest. They are often darker in tone than in warmer areas.
20. Sun emits three kinds of energy; visible light, ultraviolet light, and infrared radiation.
21. The Earth revolves around the Sun.
22. The ozone layer absorbs most of the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet rays which cause sunburns.
23. Due to its temperature and pressure, nuclear reactions occur within the core of the Sun.
24. The Sun produces energy that supports all life on Earth through a process known as photosynthesis.
25. Aristarchus was the first scientist to theorize that the Earth and the other planets orbited around the Sun.
27. The process by which energy moves from the Sun to the Earth is known as radiation.
28. The sun’s UV rays also have antiseptic properties.
28. The Sun is actually a mixture of all colors, which appears to the eye as white.
29. The Sun does not have any rings.
30. The Sun’s rotation period at the equator is about 27 days while that at the poles is about 36 days.
31. Sun completes a revolution around the entire galaxy once every 250 million years.
32. Sun has enough nuclear fuel to stay as it is for 5 billion more years.
33. The sun is currently in its yellow dwarf stage.
34. Because the Earth travels on an elliptical orbit around the Sun, the distance between the two bodies varies from 147 to 152 million kilometers.
35. A person weighing 150 pounds on Earth would weigh 4,200 pounds on the sun because of the sun’s gravity.
36. The Sun rotates in the opposite direction to Earth with the Sun rotating from west to east instead of east to west like Earth.
37. Isaac Newton developed a sunlight phobia from staring at the sun.
38. The American flags placed on the moon are now white due to radiation from the sun.
39. In February 1974, Skylab was the first manned spacecraft to study the Sun.
