Aviva Trivia

¢ It is the largest object in our solar system.

¢ It measures 870 thousand miles in diameter.

¢ Its mass makes it one of the larger stars in the universe. Most stars amount to about half the mass of our sun, though some can be much larger as well.

¢ It is about four and a half billion years old.

¢ It is expected to last for another five billion years or so, by which point in time it will have used up all its energy and will essentially ˜swallow’ up the earth and the other planets.

¢ It will most likely become a planetary nebulae in the final stages of its life.

¢ It’s made up of about 70% hydrogen, 28% helium and the other 2% from other metals. This is slowly changing over time as the sun converts the hydrogen at its core into helium.

¢ Since the sun is not solid like the earth, it doesn’t rotate evenly on its axis. Near the equator it takes around 25 days to make a full rotation, while near the poles it can take up to 36 days.

¢ At the sun’s core the temperature is 27 million Fahrenheit.

¢ The sun’s surface temperature is 10,000 Fahrenheit, but the cooler sunspot regions are only 6400 Fahrenheit.

¢ The moon and the sun look to be the same size when viewed from the earth.

¢ Staring at the sun can lead to permanent blindness.

¢ Once or twice a year a solar eclipse occurs when the moon travels in front of the sun.

¢ The sun is on average 93 million miles away from the earth.

¢ It takes just over eight minutes for the light from the sun to make it to the earth.

¢ The sun’s magnetic field extends farther than Pluto.

¢ Our sun has many satellites orbiting it including the nine planets of our solar system.