The Sun is not only a central celestial body but also a dynamic and essential part of our existence and the solar system's functioning.
It primarily consists of hydrogen (about 74%) and helium (about 24%) with trace amounts of heavier elements like oxygen, carbon, neon, and iron.
The Sun's diameter is about 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles), which is approximately 109 times the diameter of Earth. It could fit over 1 million Earths inside it.
The Sun is approximately 4.6 billion years old and is roughly halfway through its middle age phase of life. It takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds for light to reach earth from the Sun.
In about 5 billion years, the Sun will exhaust its hydrogen fuel in the core and evolve into a red giant, expanding to a size that could engulf Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth before shedding it's outer layer to become a white dwarf.
The Sun's immense gravity holds the solar system together. Its gravitational pull keeps all the planets, moons, asteroids, and comets in their orbits.
The Sun produces an enormous amount of energy every second. The total energy output of the Sun is equivalent to about 386 billion megawatts, enough to power the entire world's electricity consumption for about a million years.
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