1,393,684 km - The Diameter Of The Sun

Fact of the day: 1,393,684 km - The diameter of the sun.


(above) The Sun

The sun is the heart of the solar system. It contains 99.9% of the mass of the solar system.
Every single living thing on our planet relies on its radiation.
The sun is a yellow dwarf star and has an estimated lifetime of 10 billion years. The sun is around halfway through its lifetime.

The sun creates its gigantic amounts of radiation by fusing hydrogen into helium. This is called nuclear fusion. It can only take place in very high temperatures (the temperature of the sun's core is more than 15,000,000ºC) and pressures, and because of this, scientists can make fusion reactors, but they need more energy to start the fusion process than it ends up producing. The radiation from the surface of the sun takes eight minutes to travel to the earth, however, the radiation takes up to 100,000 years from is's core to the surface of the sun.

The sun is built up in layers:

• Core - Where the highest temperatures and pressures are and where nuclear fusion takes place. 99% of the sun's power is produced in only 24% of its radius.

• Radiative Zone - This zone is not hot enough for nuclear fusion to take place, but is still very hot and dense, it temperature ranging from 7,000,000ºC to 2,000,000ºC.

• Tachocline - This zone is a transition zone between the Radiative Zone and the Convection Zone. It is hypothesised that this zone produces the sun's magnetic field.

• Convective Zone - This zone transfers thermal energy from the core to the surface via currents within the layer, instead of radiation.

• Photosphere - The zone that is the visible surface of the sun.

• Atmosphere - The atmosphere of the sun is made up of four layers, the chromosphere, the transition region, the corona, and the heliosphere.


The sun has a very strong magnetic field, but as the equator of the sun travels much faster than the rest of the sun, the difference in speeds twists the field, and the field bursts into loops, creating sunspots.

The sun's corona (in it's atmosphere) is a very active area of the sun. The surface of the sun is around 5,700ºC, but in the corona temperatures reach over 1,000,000ºC. It occasionally produces solar flares which can dramatically affect the global telecommunications system here on earth.


(above) A Solar Flare

Images from NASA, https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/iotd.html

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