Everybody knows the sun is our closest star, and is responsible for heating the Earth, but what don’t you know?
1. The sun contains 99.8% of all the mass in our solar system – that includes all of the planets, their moons and everything on Earth!
2. One day on the sun (the time it takes to rotate once on it’s axis) is equivalent to 25.4 Earth days (that’s 610 hours)
3. Gravity is 28 times stronger on the Sun than it is on Earth. An average (150lb) person would weigh 4200lb if they could visit the sun.
4. All of the planets orbit the sun anti-clockwise. AND they’re all roughly on the same plane.
5. To match the amount of energy produced by the sun, you would have to detonate one hundred thousand million tonnes of dynamite EVERY SECOND!
6. Roughly every 11 years, the sun changes its magnetic polarity – that means that the North Pole becomes the South Pole, and vice versa. Think about how many times that’s already happened in your lifetime!
7. The sun is 75% hydrogen and 23% helium (and 2% heavier elements), and hydrogen has been it’s primary fuel source for as long as it has existed.
8. The inside of the sun is completely dark! Only the outside surface shines brightly, and if you removed it, you’d see nothing at all.
9. If a normal passenger plane flew at its normal speed from the Earth to the sun, it would take 20 years, non-stop, for it to get there.
10. Just like the 8 planets (or 9, if you include Pluto), orbit the sun, the sun itself orbits the centre of the Milky Way galaxy. One “year” for the sun, is 225 million Earth years.