Interesting Facts About the Sun

You love it when you feel the warmth of the sun on your face when you wake up early in the morning; you love it when you feel its warmth on your skin on a chilly winter morning, you love to bask under the sun and get that tan that you have been waiting for, in short we all are grateful to the sun (except maybe on a hot summer day when its strong rays, nearly turn us to ashes!). We all have studied in our school and college textbooks, about how the sun is millions of years old and that it's a huge ball of fire and that it rises in the east and sets in the west. But, besides these points, there are several more interesting facts about the sun, which many of us do not know of. Do you really think that the sun is the biggest object in the solar system? Do you know how big the sun is compared to the Earth? Do you know what are the various layers of the sun? Do you know what is the sun made of? No? Then given below are some fun facts.

Amazing Facts about Sun

These facts will teach you more about this huge star. After reading these facts, you will be amazed that how powerful this star actually is.

1. The sun is a star which is around 4½ billion years old. Scientists have pointed out the sun is supposed to shine for another 5 billion years. So, nothing to worry about for now.
2. 99.8% of the Solar system, is occupied by the sun, while Jupiter, which is the largest of the eight planets, occupies 0.2% of the solar system. Hence you can imagine, how small our earth seems in the solar system. We need at least 109 Earths just to fit the disk of the sun, while we need around 1.2 million Earths to fill the interior of the sun. The light from the sun travels over a distance of around 93 million miles in order to reach the Earth. That is the distance from Earth to Sun. Do you know how long it takes this light to reach us? Around 8.3 to 9 minutes. Amazing speed right?
3. 74% of the sun is made up of hydrogen, while 24% is made up of helium. The rest 2% contains small amounts of iron, oxygen and some other elements which are present in our solar system.
4. There are at least 200 billion stars in our universe and the sun is one of them. Of these 200 billion, only 6000 stars can be seen by the naked eyes of humans and the sun is one of them. But it would be wrong to think that the sun is the largest star in the universe. There are several stars, in front of which the sun would look like the earth does in front of the sun.
5. The surface temperature of the sun is nearly around 10,000ºF and the temperature of the center of the sun is around 27,000 ºF. The amount of energy produced by the sun is approximately 385 billion-billion megawatts out of which Earth receives around 95 billion megawatts.
6. The sun is not just a hot gaseous ball of fire, it is made up of several layers and the outer most layer of the sun is called 'photosphere' and this layer is made up of dense gases. This is the only layer that is visible to us. Just beneath this layer is the 'convective zone', where the heat moves slowly from the inner layers to the surface. Beneath this layer is the radiative zone, and this is where the hydrogen and helium reactions take place.
7. The sun produces a stream of particles which are of low density and they are called solar winds, and contain electrons and protons and blow across the solar system at a speed of 450 km/sec.
8. Different parts of the sun rotate at a different speed. The regions at the equator takes around 25 days for one rotation, the inside of the sun takes 27 days and the areas near the poles takes 36 days. This is possible because the sun is a gaseous body.
9. With age, the sun becomes brighter and hotter and slowly over the next billion years, it will burn up the Earth. Don't worry now, cause this will take place billions of years later!
10. The sun too revolves around the milky way and it takes 225,000,000 years to complete one round around the milky way, while traveling at a speed of 800,000 km per hour.
11. Only 55% of Americans know that the sun is a star.
12. You will never see a solar eclipse last more than 7 minutes and 58 seconds, as that is the speed of the sun at which it moves.
13. If you think that the sun is the hottest, don't, because some lighting bolts can be even hotter than the sun.
14. In some places like Rhodes Islands, people are not allowed to smoke after the sun has set for the day.
15. Suppose the sun stops shining, then it would take us 8 minutes to realize that.
16. Aztecs believed that 'sunset' actually meant that the sun was dead, and that it needed human blood so that it could get the strength rise up the next day. They sacrificed 15,000 men every year.

Phew! Those were some facts that we never knew about (and I do not mean the people who are there at NASA). Hope you learned a lot about this huge star. Now go and impress your friends with your knowledge.