Facts about the Sun

FACTS ABOUT THE SUN

TEN FACTS ABOUT THE SUN
Fact One:
The official definition of a star like The Sun as a "Yellow G2 Dwarf." It is an average, middle-aged star.
Fact Two:
If the Sun was brighter, it would be hotter and would have burnt off its hydrogen fuel billions of years ago. This means that, if the Sun is any different to how it is now, life on Earth would not exist. It is the perfect size, perfect age, perfect distance, perfect temperature and perfect brightness for life to exist on a planet like Earth.
Fact Three:
Everytime hydrogen nuclei fuse together to form helium nuclei, which results in a burst of energy, heating up and powering the Sun, the Sun loses a tiny amount of its mass.
Fact Four:
If we could remove the bright, glowing surface of the Sun, we would see nothing other than blackness. Only the Sun's outer surface shines brightly. The inside of the Sun is complete darkness.
Fact Five:
Light from the Sun takes 8 minutes to reach Earth, 40 minutes to reach Jupiter and 7 hours to reach the edge of the Solar System.
Fact Six:
In the same way that the planets orbit around the Sun, the Sun orbits around the centre of the Milky Way galaxy, taking 225,000,000 years to complete a full orbit, travelling at 800,000 kilometres per hour.
Fact Seven:
Many centuries ago, people believed Earth to be the centre of the Universe, with the Sun as a planet orbiting it. They believed that the Moon was the closest planet, followed by either Mercury, Venus or the Sun in the next closest position, with Jupiter and Saturn orbiting furthest away.
Fact Eight:
The Sun was formed, like every other star, from a huge swirling cloud of gas called a nebula. The cloud contained all the matter which went together to form the Sun and its family of 9 planets, 61 moons and hundreds of thousands of asteroids, meteors and comets. In total, 98% of the matter in the cloud formed the Sun. The other 2% formed all of the other objects in the Solar System. And, just in case you want to know what the mass of the Sun is, it's about 1,989,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms!
Fact Nine:
The Sun's gravitational pull is so strong that, even a planet 5,900,000,000 kilometres away from it (Pluto) is still kept in orbit of the Sun.
Fact Ten:
The Sun is almost half-way through its life, and at its most stable point in its lifetime. Eventually, it will increase in size, eating up the Inner Planets and heating up the Outer Planets and their moons, before collapsing to become a very small White Dwarf.