The diameter of the Sun is 856,658 miles!

Did you know that the sun's diameter is almost 856,658 miles or 1.4 million kilometers? The sun is the star in the center of our solar system and is 4.6 billion years old!  Also, 1.3 million Earths can fit inside the Sun!

Our sun has a surface temperature of 5,500 degrees Celsius, while the core is a hot 15,000 degrees Celsius! Three fourths of the Sun is made up of hydrogen while the remainder is helium.  The light from the sun takes approximately eight minutes to reach the Earth's surface.

The sun will continue to burn for another 5 billion years; after this time, the sun will get larger and larger until it becomes a Red Giant, where it would consume the planets of Mercury, Venus, and the Earth. The sun will finally turn into a White Dwarf, or core remnant, after trillions of years. One teaspoon of White Dwarf matter can weigh almost 6 tons!

The sun has a very strong magnetic field and a solar wind of charged particles known as the solar wind rapidly shoot away from the sun into the solar system at a speed of 280 miles per second.  These magnetic solar winds can interfere with the Earth's magnetic field by altering its shape.

A massive solar flare shooting out from the Sun!

Some more interesting Sun facts:

• The sun represents 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System!

• Sun-worshipping religions include the Egyptian, Meso-American, and Indo-European cultures.

• There are people who stare at the sun in order to control their hunger!

• The sun reverses its magnetic polarity approximately every 11 years; the north magnetic pole will become the south magnetic pole and vice versa.

• Napoleon Bonaparte had viewed the sun as the universal giver of life; if the sun were a religion, he would choose the sun as a god!

• Japan's officially name of Nippon means origin of the sun.  The red sun is proudly displayed in the middle of  the Japanese flag, with a white background!

• A person who weighs 150 pounds on Earth would weigh a heavy 4,200 pounds on the Sun, due to the Sun's gravity, which is 28 times that of Earth's.

• The sun's atmosphere has three layers: Photosphere, Chromosphere, and the Corona

• The sun rotates in a western to eastern direction, unlike Earth's rotation from east to west.

• The sun is almost a perfect sphere; there is a 10 kilometer difference between the polar and equatorial diameters.

• The sun rotates more rapidly at the equator than at the poles.

• In a two week period, the sun produces more energy than all the energy produced from coal, iron, and natural gas reserves on Earth!

• The light from the sun can be divided up into long wavelengths, such as radio waves, or short wavelengths, such as X-rays.

• It takes the sun 225 million years to travel to the center of the Milky Way.  This distance is known as a cosmic year.

• When the sun transforms into a White Dwarf from a Red Giant, the light from the sun will be as bright as 100 moons when viewed from the Earth!