Namesake
The Sun has been called by many names. The Latin word for Sun is “sol,” which is the main
adjective for all things Sun-related: solar. Helios, the Sun god in ancient Greek mythology, lends
his name to many Sun-related terms as well, such as heliosphere and helioseismology.
Potential for Life
The Sun could not harbor life as we know it because of its extreme temperatures and radiation.
Yet life on Earth is only possible because of the Sun’s light and energy.
Size and Distance
Our Sun is a medium-sized star with a radius of about 435,000 miles (700,000 kilometers). Many
stars are much larger – but the Sun is far more massive than our home planet: it would take
more than 330,000 Earths to match the mass of the Sun, and it would take 1.3 million Earths to
fill the Sun's volume.
The Sun is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth. Its nearest stellar
neighbor is the Alpha Centauri triple star system: red dwarf star Proxima Centauri is 4.24 light-
years away, and Alpha Centauri A and B – two sunlike stars orbiting each other – are 4.37 light-
years away. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year, which equals about 6 trillion
miles (9.5 trillion kilometers).
Orbit and Rotation
The Sun is located in the Milky Way galaxy in a spiral arm called the Orion Spur that extends
outward from the Sagittarius arm.
The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way, bringing with it the planets, asteroids, comets, and
other objects in our solar system. 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 about
230 million years for the Sun to make one complete trip around the Milky Way.
The Sun rotates on its axis as it revolves around the galaxy. Its spin has a tilt of 7.25 degrees with
respect to the plane of the planets’ orbits. Since the Sun is not solid, different parts rotate at
different rates. At the equator, the Sun spins around once about every 25 Earth days, but at its
poles, the Sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.
Moons
As a star, the Sun doesn’t have any moons, but the planets and their moons orbit the Sun.
Rings
The Sun would have been surrounded by a disk of gas and dust early in its history when the
solar system was first forming, about 4.6 billion years ago. Some of that dust is still around
today, in several dust rings that circle the Sun. They trace the orbits of planets, whose gravity
tugs dust into place around the Sun.
Formation
The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago in a giant, spinning cloud of gas and dust called the
solar nebula. As the nebula collapsed under its own gravity, it spun faster and flattened into a
disk. Most of the nebula's material was pulled toward the center to form our Sun, which
accounts for 99.8% of our solar system’s mass. Much of the remaining material formed the
planets and other objects that now orbit the Sun. (The rest of the leftover gas and dust was
blown away by the young Sun's early solar wind.)
Like all stars, our Sun will eventually run out of energy. When it starts to die, the Sun will expand
into a red giant star, becoming so large that it will engulf Mercury and Venus, and possibly Earth
as well. Scientists predict the Sun is a little less than halfway through its lifetime and will last
another 5 billion years or so before it becomes a white dwarf.
Structure
The Sun is a huge ball of hydrogen and helium held together by its own gravity.
The Sun has several regions. The interior regions include the core, the radiative zone, and the
convection zone. Moving outward – the visible surface or photosphere is next, then the
chromosphere, followed by the transition zone, and then the corona – the Sun’s expansive
outer atmosphere.
Once material leaves the corona at supersonic speeds, it becomes the solar wind, which forms a
huge magnetic "bubble" around the Sun, called the heliosphere. The heliosphere extends
beyond the orbit of the planets in our solar system. Thus, Earth exists inside the Sun’s
atmosphere. Outside the heliosphere is interstellar space.
The core is the hottest part of the Sun. Nuclear reactions here – where hydrogen is fused to
form helium – power the Sun’s heat and light. Temperatures top 27 million °F (15 million °C) and
it’s about 86,000 miles (138,000 kilometers) thick. The density of the Sun’s core is about 150
grams per cubic centimeter (g/cm³). That is approximately 8 times the density of gold (19.3
g/cm³) or 13 times the density of lead (11.3 g/cm³).
Energy from the core is carried outward by radiation. This radiation bounces around the
radiative zone, taking about 170,000 years to get from the core to the top of the convection
zone. Moving outward, in the convection zone, the temperature drops below 3.5 million °F (2
million °C). Here, large bubbles of hot plasma (a soup of ionized atoms) move upward toward
the photosphere, which is the layer we think of as the Sun's surface.
Surface
The Sun doesn’t have a solid surface like Earth and the other rocky planets and moons. The part
of the Sun commonly called its surface is the photosphere. The word photosphere means "light
sphere" – which is apt because this is the layer that emits the most visible light. It’s what we see
from Earth with our eyes. (Hopefully, it goes without saying – but never look directly at the Sun
without protecting your eyes.)
Although we call it the surface, the photosphere is actually the first layer of the solar
atmosphere. It's about 250 miles thick, with temperatures reaching 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. Most of the Sun's
radiation escapes outward from the photosphere into space.
Atmosphere
Above the photosphere is the chromosphere, the transition zone, and the corona. Not all
scientists refer to the transition zone as its own region – it is simply the thin layer where the
chromosphere rapidly heats and becomes the corona. The photosphere, chromosphere, and
corona are all part of the Sun’s atmosphere. (The corona is sometimes casually referred to as
“the Sun’s atmosphere,” but it is actually the Sun’s upper atmosphere.)
The Sun’s atmosphere is where we see features such as sunspots, coronal holes, and solar
flares.
