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The Sun Is Far Away and Takes Up Most of the Solar System
If you would like to travel to the sun, you would have to travel about 93 million miles. Yet, the sun's light, which travels at an incredible speed, takes a little more than eight minutes to reach us here on Earth.
The sun makes up over 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass. Since the majority of the last 0.2 percent of this mass comes from Jupiter, the Earth is but a tiny fraction of the solar system. The sun's interior could actually contain about 1.3 million Earths.
The Sun Is Relatively Bright
According to Universe Today, of the 50 stars nearest to Earth, the sun is the fourth brightest in absolute terms. It is not nearly as bright as farther away stars such as Betelgeuse, but the sun is not weak by any means.
The Sun Is Ancient, but Middle-Aged
Astronomers speculate that the sun has been around for about 4.59 billion years. The sun is using up its fuel, however. In about 5 billion years, it is projected to swell into a Red Giant, swallow the inner planets and die (becoming a white dwarf). This makes it about middle-aged in star terms.
The Sun Is Nuclear and Layered
The sun's core temperature (about 15 million kelvin) combined with its immense pressure (340 billion times more pressure than Earth's sea-level air pressure) causes nuclear reactions to occur.
The sun is not just a fireball. It has layers: the core (in the middle), the photosphere, the chromosphere and the corona. Each layer consists of different components.
The sun's layers have different temperatures. The sun's surface is at about 6000 kelvin, but its chromosphere (which actually happens to be above its surface) is about 100,000 kelvin. Its corona, which extends farther than the sun, can reach 1 million kelvin.
The Sun's Parts Rotate at Various Speeds
Because the sun contains a lot of hydrogen gas, its different parts rotate at a variety of speeds. The sun's equator rotates in about 25 days, while its poles rotate in about 36 days and its interior rotates in approximately 27 days.
The Sun Has Two Main Ingredients
About 74 percent of the sun's mass is hydrogen, and about 24 percent is helium. The last 2 percent contains iron, oxygen, nickel and other solar system elements.
The Sun Is Getting Hotter
The sun is slowly but surely getting hotter. Scientists estimate that it is getting about 10 percent brighter and hotter each year. This means that within about 1 billion years, the sun will be so hot that it evaporates any water on Earth and effectively kills most forms of life that could potentially inhabit the planet.