Throughout centuries, many cultures have looked up to the glowing sunrise and prayed its light shone brighter on them. Our home star has powered the solar system for eons and will keep doing so till it runs out of fuel.
However, beneath its glory and size lie mysterious truths, and today, we will be looking at these truths to appreciate the next sunrise and sunset. So, let’s peer into the blinding light together as we look at 10 mesmerizing sun facts.
Key Takeaways
- Our star is a humongous glowing ball of secrets that even the best scientists are still trying to figure out today.
- From its structure to its relationship with other planets in the solar system, today’s article will dive into the secrets of the sun.
Flash Facts
| Mass | 1.9885×1030 kg |
| Circumference | 4.379 million km |
| Equatorial Radius | 6.957 x 108 m |
| Volume | 1.412×1018 km3 |
| Density | 1.408 g/cm3 |
| Age | 4.6 billion years old |
| Surface Temperature | 5,500° C (10,000° F) |
| Core Temperature | 15,000,000° C (22,000,000 ° F) |
| Velocity Around the Milky Way | 251 km/s |
| Escape Velocity | 617.7 km/s |
Is There Solid Ground
For all the tales told about the Sun, none have ventured into the intricacies of its surface.
On the outside, many people believe that our star has a surface as it appears to be a solid object, and they are right.
The Sun has a surface called the photosphere, the visible part we see.
However, things get interesting when we peer into the structure of the photosphere. Unlike what most people may believe, it is not solid.
In fact, the photosphere is still a part of the solar atmosphere, meaning if one ventured to our star and fell in, they would most likely sink till they reached the core.
Outside Hotter Than Inside?
For many of you who may be intrigued by our star, you must have learned the Sun’s surface, or the photosphere is extremely hot at about 5,500 Celsius (10,000 Fahrenheit).
However, things get weirder when we venture out of the Sun. The Corona, the outer atmosphere, is about 2 million degrees Celsius (3.5 million Fahrenheit) hot.
The weirdest part about this is that scientists have not yet been able to fully explain why our star’s outer atmosphere is hotter than the surface. Many theories have tried to explain it, but none have solved the problem.
It Rotates?
There seems to be a theme in today’s article. Most of the truths we uncover seem to be so shocking that we have to put them as questions.
One of these truths is the Sun’s rotation. Yes, our star rotates along a tilted 7.25-degree axis.
However, its rotation is just one part of the shocking revelation.
Because the Sun is not solid and exists as plasma, it does not rotate uniformly; this means that at the equator of our star, the rotation is much faster than at the poles.
It takes the Sun about 24 Earth days to complete a rotation at its equator, but a varying amount of days to complete a rotation in multiple other parts. At the poles, the rotation duration exceeds 30 Earth days.
Are you enjoying the facts? Check out our Cosmology Section Today or search through our Facts Database.
The Color Issue
What is the color of the Sun? Yellow, blue-green, or white? All the answers above might be correct, depending on the situation.
When Albert Einstein introduced the world to the theory of relativity, he showed that the truth varies based on different circumstances.
The same is true for our star regarding its color.
From space, it is white. Further proving this assumption right is the rainbow experiment that involves shining sunlight through a glass prism to produce multiple rainbow colors.
However, perspective can influence one’s perception of our star. On Earth, especially at sunrise and sunset, our star seems yellow because the atmosphere scatters the colors it emits; this is also why the sky is blue.
Now, on the matter of blue-green, that would be the result of scientists explaining a very complex phenomenon. It goes like this:
The Sun is a massive energy ball that emits light on what scientists call a black body spectrum. The energy released leaves in all forms of electromagnetic waves, but most of it occurs at the 500nm wavelength, which is close to blue-green light.
From this, scientists assume that our star is blue-green.
Most people see the Sun as white because it emits energy in enormous amounts. The human eye’s color receptor, the cones, only recognizes three colors: blue, green, and red.
So when the Sun’s light shines, the excessive energy released causes the cones to register an over-saturation of light; this leads to the brain interpreting the result as white.
How Bright Is The Sun
It is a no-brainer that the Sun is the brightest object in our field of view. The glowing plasma ball is so bright that looking directly at it would cause blindness. But how bright is it compared to other stars?
Well, in the Milky Way, the Sun would get an A in brightness as it is brighter than 85% of stars in the galaxy.
For calculative context, our star is about 36 thousand trillion trillion lumens or 36 octillion lumens (36,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000).
So next time you ask how bright the Sun is in lumens, know it is 36 octillion-very-bright.
It Is Not A Perfect Sphere
Many look to the sunset and are mesmerized at how our star sphere glows yellow as the night draws. However, it is all an illusion, as the Sun is imperfect.
Our star, which powers everything in the solar system, bulges at its equator.
It also has no boundaries as it is not a solid structure. What it does have is predefined layers.
The Sun’s Revolution
For thousands of years, many cultures and religions believed the Sun and the Earth were the center of the universe.
This ideology evolved into an indisputable fact used by religious and political leaders.
However, in the 1600s, a scientist made a discovery that shook the foundations of astronomy. In the early 1610s, Galileo Galilei pointed his improved telescope at the night sky, and what he discovered revolutionized science.
After discovering the moon was not a perfect sphere and the Sun had spots, Galileo proposed the radical idea of its rotation; this shook the church so much that he was placed under house arrest till he died.
Centuries later, in the early 20th century, another scientist, Harlow Shapley, proposed that the Sun not only rotated but revolved around the Milky Way. He also stated the solar system was not at the galaxy’s center but at the edge.
Shapley’s work proved correct, and scientists discovered it took the Sun 225 million years to revolve around the galaxy.
A Dwarf or A Giant?
Perspective is what guides our thinking and pushes us into making decisions. However, we believe our ideas are absolute when we lack a different perspective.
Before scientists discovered the details that make up the immensely intricate canvas we call the universe, most people believed our star was a giant. Cultures looked up to it as the absolute object in the sky.
However, as humans invented bigger and better telescopes, we realized that the Sun, which we propped up for millennia, was a dwarf.
Yes, the Sun, which accounts for 99.86% of the solar system’s mass, is a class-G yellow dwarf star.
Imagine telling someone from 500 BC the Sun is small besides other stars. That would lead to a heated discussion.
The Carrington Event
The Sun may look nice from Earth. However, it is far from calm. It routinely explodes, ejecting a mass of solar wind into the solar system; this wind is radiation-filled and threatens life on our planet. However, the Earth defends itself using its magnetic field.
Sometimes, the solar flares produce a massive solar wind shockwave that disturbs the Earth’s magnetic field, leading to a geomagnetic storm.
The most intense ever recorded was the Carrington Event, which occurred from the 1st to the 2nd of September, 1859.
The aurora borealis was so bright during the Carrington Event that people could read under it.
The storm also caused telegraphs to fail worldwide, and some operators received electric jolts while trying to use them.
Will Our Star Float on Water?
This question must have crossed your mind even once if you are curious about the composition of our star.
You must have wondered, if the Sun is not solid, does that not mean it would float on water? Well, the answer to that question involves an explanation.
Though the Sun is the most massive object in our solar system, it has a density of about 1.4g/cm3; this means it is slightly denser than water and will not float in it.
However, it will float in Mercury, without considering the scorching temperature. Also, another shocker about our star’s density is that the Earth is denser than it.
Conclusion
We hope you had a lot of fun reading our fun facts. Don’t forget to leave us a comment and share with as many as you can.
You can also check out our scary facts and Search Our Facts Database today.
