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True Facts About the Sun

When people think of the solar system, they think of the planets and the stars. But there is one large piece of the solar system they're forgetting. The sun is a very important aspect of the solar system, and there are a lot of things to learn about it.

Life Expectancy
- The sun has an extremely long life expectancy. It is predicted that the sun will burn in our solar system for an estimated 11 billion years, according to FunShun.com.
Solar Eclipse
- A solar eclipse will never last longer than 7 minutes and 58 seconds, notes FunShun.com, because the sun's fast movement prevents a more prolonged eclipse from happening.
History
- The Aztecs once believed that the sun required blood to burn. Therefore, thousands of humans were sacrificed annually, and their heart's were gifted to the Sun God, Huitzilopochtli, states Minnesota State University.
Size
- The sun's diameter measures approximately 870,000 miles. This is 109 times larger than the Earth's diameter, states NewsDial.com, and the sun could hold more than 1 million Earths inside it.
Temperature
- The sun is about 15,000,000 degrees Celsius at the core. The surface layer of the sun is much cooler, measuring only approximately 6,000 degrees Celsius, according to SunTrek.org. Further out in the sun's atmosphere, temperatures become hotter, registering near 1 million degrees Celsius.

Astronomy