Sun Facts

Sun is a star and centerpiece of our solar system, the gravity force that keeps everything together. According to modern scientific theory the star we call the Sun was formed about 4,500 million years ago. Massive gas cloud surrounded by dust began to compress. As one small part gained in density, it started to produce a small gravitational pull. The Solar System originated when gravitational forces caused what is called the solar nebula to collapse and coalesce into a spinning disc with the central mass forming the Sun.

The sun is expected to continue to keep burning for another 4.5 to 5 billion years. The actual process that fuels our Sun is called fusion. Fusion is fueled by the elements of the Sun to create what is essentially a ball of plasma. The atomic elements that act as fuel for this process are hydrogen and helium atoms. Hydrogen makes up roughly 74 percent of the mass of the Sun. Helium makes up roughly 24 percent. The remaining one percent consists of trace elements such as iron.

Sun distance from earth 93 million miles, the diameter: 870,000 miles, sun's mass: 330,000 times the mass of the earth, solar wind speed: 3 million km/hour, solar cycle: 8 to 11 years, temperature at core: 22.5 million degrees F, rotation period at equator: 25 earth days and rotation period at poles: 35 earth days. Luminosity: 386 billion billion megawatts. A strange thing about the sun is that most of it is not solid, but is like a ball of jelly, because it is made up of mostly gas, which moves about. That's why it rotates at a different speed at the poles than at the equator.

When observed with the proper filters we can see sunspots on the surface of the Sun. These spots have a lower temperature than the surrounding area and therefore appear dark. Sunspots are areas of intense magnetic power where thermal convection from the interior of the Sun has been inhibited. The Sun has been active for about four and a half billion years and has used up about half of the hydrogen fuel it started with. The Sun will continue to burn for about another five billion years after which it will start to force helium to under go nuclear fusion into heavier elements. This will cause the Sun to swell up in size to the point of consuming the Earth and more as it becomes what is called a red giant. A billion years after becoming a red giant our Sun will finally collapse into a white dwarf. Incredibly, it could then take as much as one trillion years to cool off.