The Sun—the heart of our solar system—is a yellow dwarf star, a hot ball of glowing

gases.

Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything from the biggest
planets to the smallest particles of debris in its orbit. Electric currents in the Sun
generate a magnetic field that is carried out through the solar system by the solar
wind—a stream of electrically charged gas blowing outward from the Sun in all
directions.

The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons,
ocean currents, weather, climate, radiation belts and aurorae. Though it is special to
us, there are billions of stars like our Sun scattered across the Milky Way galaxy.

Size and Distance

With a radius of 432,168.6 miles (695,508 kilometers), our Sun is not an especially large star—
many are several times bigger—but it is still far more massive than our home planet: 332,946
Earths match the mass of the Sun. The Sun’s volume would need 1.3 million Earths to fill it.

The Sun is 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth. Its nearest stellar neighbor is the
Alpha Centauri triple star system: Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light years away, and Alpha Centauri
A and B—two stars orbiting each other—are 4.37 light years away. A light year is the distance
light travels in one year, which is equal to 5,878,499,810,000 miles or 9,460,528,400,000
kilometers.

Orbit and Rotation

The Sun, and everything that orbits it, is located in the Milky Way galaxy. More specifically, our
Sun is in a spiral arm called the Orion Spur that extends outward from the Sagittarius arm. From
there, the Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way Galaxy, bringing the planets, asteroids, comets
and other objects along with it. Our solar system is moving with an average velocity of 450,000
miles per hour (720,000 kilometers per hour). But even at this speed, it takes us about 230 million
years to make one complete orbit around the Milky Way.

The Sun rotates as it orbits the center of the Milky Way. Its spin has an axial tilt of 7.25 degrees
with respect to the plane of the planets’ orbits. Since the Sun is not a solid body, different parts of
the Sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the Sun spins around once about every 25 days,
but at its poles the Sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.
Formation
The Sun and the rest of the solar system formed from a giant, rotating cloud of gas and dust
called a solar nebula about 4.5 billion years ago. As the nebula collapsed because of its
overwhelming gravity, it spun faster and flattened into a disk. Most of the material was pulled
toward the center to form our Sun, which accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the entire solar
system.

Like all stars, the Sun will someday run out of energy. When the Sun starts to die, it will swell so
big that it will engulf Mercury and Venus and maybe even Earth. Scientists predict the Sun is a
little less than halfway through its lifetime and will last another 6.5 billion years before it shrinks
down to be a white dwarf.

Structure
The Sun, like others stars, is a ball of gas. In terms of the number of atoms, it is made of 91.0%
hydrogen and 8.9% helium. By mass, the Sun is about 70.6% hydrogen and 27.4% helium.

The Sun has six regions: the core, the radiative zone, and the
convective zone in the interior; the visible surface, called the
photosphere; the chromosphere; and the outermost region,
the corona.

The Sun's enormous mass is held together by gravitational attraction, producing immense
pressure and temperature at its core. The Sun has six regions: the core, the radiative zone, and
the convective zone in the interior; the visible surface, called the photosphere; the chromosphere;
and the outermost region, the corona.

At the core, the temperature is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius),
which is sufficient to sustain thermonuclear fusion. This is a process in which atoms combine to
form larger atoms and in the process release staggering amounts of energy. Specifically, in the
Sun’s core, hydrogen atoms fuse to make helium.

The energy produced in the core powers the Sun and produces all the heat and light the Sun
emits. Energy from the core is carried outward by radiation, which bounces around the radiative
zone, taking about 170,000 years to get from the core to the top of the convective zone. The
temperature drops below 3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius) in the
convective zone, where large bubbles of hot plasma (a soup of ionized atoms) move upwards.
The surface of the Sun—the part we can see—is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit (5,500
degrees Celsius). That's much cooler than the blazing core, but it's still hot enough to make
carbon, like diamonds and graphite, not just melt, but boil.
Surface
The surface of the Sun, the photosphere, is a 300-mile-thick (500-kilometer-thick) region, from
which most of the Sun's radiation escapes outward. This is not a solid surface like the surfaces of
planets. Instead, this is the outer layer of the gassy star.

We see radiation from the photosphere as sunlight when it reaches Earth about eight minutes
after it leaves the Sun. The temperature of the photosphere is about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit
(5,500 degrees Celsius).

Atmosphere
Above the photosphere lie the tenuous chromosphere and the corona (crown), which make up
the thin solar atmosphere. This is where we see features such as sunspots and solar flares.

Visible light from these top regions is usually too weak to be seen against the brighter
photosphere, but during total solar eclipses, when the moon covers the photosphere, the
chromosphere looks like a red rim around the Sun, while the corona forms a beautiful white crown
with plasma streamers narrowing outward, forming shapes that look like flower petals.

Strangely, the temperature in the Sun's atmosphere increases with altitude, reaching as high as
3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit (2 million degrees Celsius). The source of coronal heating has
been a scientific mystery for more than 50 years.

Potential for Life

The Sun itself is not a good place for living things, with its hot, energetic mix of gases and
plasma. But the Sun has made life on Earth possible, providing warmth as well as energy that
organisms like plants use to form the basis of many food chains.

Moons
The Sun and other stars don't have moons; instead, they have planets and their moons, along
with asteroids, comets, and other objects.

Rings
The Sun does not have rings.
Magnetosphere
The electric currents in the Sun generate a complex magnetic field that extends out into space to
form the interplanetary magnetic field. The volume of space controlled by the Sun's magnetic field
is called the heliosphere.

The Sun's magnetic field is carried out through the solar system by the solar wind—a stream of
electrically charged gas blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. Since the Sun rotates, the
magnetic field spins out into a large rotating spiral, known as the Parker spiral.

The Sun doesn't behave the same way all the time. It goes through phases of its own solar cycle.
Approximately every 11 years, the Sun’s geographic poles change their magnetic polarity. When
this happens, the Sun's photosphere, chromosphere and corona undergo changes from quiet and
calm to violently active. The height of the Sun’s activity, known as solar maximum, is a time of
solar storms: sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections. These are caused by
irregularities in the Sun's magnetic field and can release huge amounts of energy and particles,
some of which reach us here on Earth. This space weather can damage satellites, corrode
pipelines and affect power grids.

Trivias
The Sun is 109 times wider than the Earth and 330,000 times as massive.

The Sun is composed of hydrogen (70%) and Helium (28%).

The Sun will one day be about the size of Earth.

When the Sun has burned all its Hydrogen, it will continue to burn helium for 130 million
more years. During this time it will expand to the point that it will engulf Mercury, Venus,
and the Earth. At this stage it will have become a red giant

The Sun is middle-aged.

At around 4.6 billion years old, the Sun has already burned off about half of its store of
Hydrogen. It has enough left to continue to burn Hydrogen for approximately 5 billion
years. The Sun is currently a type of star known as a Yellow Dwarf.
The distance from the Sun to Earth changes throughout the year.
This is because the Earth travels on an elliptical orbit around the Sun. The distance
between the two bodies varies from 147 to 152 million kilometres.