The Sun Facts for Kids

The Solar System's Star

The Sun is the star at the center of the solar system. It is a nearly perfect sphere, or ball, of plasma, 1.391 million km in diameter (over 100 times the Earth's) and with a surface temperature of approximately 5,505°C. Its mass is about 1.989 × 10³⁰ kg, which is about 330,000 times that of Earth, and accounts for about 99.86% of the entire mass of the solar system. About 73% of this mass is made up of hydrogen (H), with about another 25% coming from helium (He), and the remaining 2% from mainly oxygen (O), carbon (C), neon (Ne), and iron (Fe).

• The photons, or particles of light, emitted by the Sun take about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to reach the Earth through the vacuum of space.
• The Sun has already burned through about half of its total supply of hydrogen (H). But don't worry, it took about 5 billion years for this to happen.
• The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, or northern and southern lights are caused by the interactions of the Sun's solar winds with Earth's atmosphere.
• The Sun emits solar winds, extremely hot and high-energy ejections of plasma, that can travel through space at up to 1.62 million kph.
• The Sun is so enormous that about 1.3 million planet Earths could fit inside of it.