Here are some interesting facts about the sun.

• The Sun is almost a perfect sphere. There is only a 10 km difference in its polar and equatorial diameters. With this condition it makes the Sun the closest thing to a perfect sphere observed in nature.

• About 99% of the mass in the solar system belongs to the Sun. It has a mass of around 330,000 times than Earth. It is three quarters hydrogen and most of its remaining mass is helium.

• The closest star to our planet is the Sun, which is why we see the Sun so big and bright.

• The Sun rotates in the opposite direction to Earth. The Sun rotating from west to east instead of east to west like Earth.

• How old is the sun? It is 4.5 billion years old according to scientists.

• One day the Sun will consume the Earth and other nearby planets. The Sun will continue to burn for about 130 million years after it burns through all of its hydrogen, instead burning helium. Due to its enormous size, the Sun will eat Mercury, Venus, and Earth. At this point, it will have become a red giant star.

• The Sun is the biggest object in the Solar System. Its radius is more than 432,000 miles while the Earth’s radius is just under 4,000 miles.

• The Sun is surrounded by a plasma aura called a ‘corona’, Latin meanings for ‘crown’. The Sun’s corona reaches millions of kilometers out into space and we can see it most easily during a total solar eclipse.

• The Sun’s Corona is larger than the Sun itself. The outer reaches of the Sun’s atmosphere stretch to a volume greater than that of the sun itself, just like the outer atmosphere is hotter than the surface.

• The Sun will kill us, literally. The sun is slowly heating up and becomes 10% more luminous every billion year. In less than another billion years, the sun will become so hot that any kind of life form will be unable to exist on Earth.

• The Sun is about 26,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way, our galaxy. It takes the Sun 225 – 250 million years to complete an orbit around the Milky Way’s center.