• The Sun is about 150 million km from the earth.

• Did you know there are dozens of words that contain the word Sun in them?

  "Did you realize that 4.5 pounds of sunlight hit the earth each second?" - Mike Rushford

• It is a medium size star, it also has medium brightness. Some stars are many times brighter, and some are many times fainter.

• The Sun's diameter is around 1.4 million km. It is approximately 109 times wider than the earth.

• One supergiant, Betelgeuse, becomes larger and smaller in diameter, sometimes reaching almost 600 times the diameter of the Sun. If the Sun grew to the size of Betelgeuse, it would swallow up Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars.

• Approximately one million Earths can fit inside the Sun.

• There are dark blotches on the Sun's surface called Sunspots. These are cooler areas of the Sun.

• The surface of the Sun is called the photosphere.

• The corona, is the outermost layer of the Sun. It stretches millions of kilometers into space.

• The center of the Sun, is made of helium.

• The Sun spins around once every 27.4 days.

• The core of the Sun is approximately 15 million degrees Celsius. The coolest part of the Sun is nearly 6,000 degrees Celsius.

• The Sun loses approximately 4 million tons every second, this is the amount of hydrogen gas that the Sun turns into energy.

• Scientists study eclipses by making artificial eclipses with an instrument called a coronograph.

• All substances made by the Sun are invisible.

• There are sometimes "Mock Suns" (parhelia) which are called Sun dogs because they follow the Sun around. These Sun dogs are usually seen as bright spots on opposite sides of the winter Sun.

• The hottest place in the world is Dallol in Ethiopia (East Africa). It's average annual temperature is 94 degrees farenheit (34.4 C)!

Facts about the Aurora

            
           

©Copyright 1998 Elizabeth Beckett, Holly Bernitt, and Vishwa Chandra.