Did you know?

• The word sun means “yellow dwarf.”
• Think Earth is big? The diameter of the sun is 864,950 miles. If the sun was hollow, you could fit 1 million planet Earths inside it!
• The sun is 4.5 billion years old.
• Want to take a road trip? It would take 176 years to drive to the sun at 60 miles per hour.
• The sun is the largest object in our solar system.
• The sun rotates on its axis once every 27.4 days.
• Have you ever heard of a sun dog? This isn't mans' best friend. A sun dog is a mock sun, so named because it follows the sun around. A sun dog is an atmospheric optical phenomenon created by the refraction of sunlight on ice crystals from cirrus and cirrostratus clouds. It appears as a bright, colorful spot to the left or right of the sun and is often associated with a halo.
• You may have seen pink, purple, red, orange, and yellow when watching a sunset, but have you ever seen green? Believe it or not, green “flashes” are actually quite common in clear air conditions. During a green flash, the top part of the sun turns green for one or two seconds because refraction bends the light of the sun.
• Some power surges and radio interference can be blamed on solar winds from the sun. These winds travel at 450 km/sec and are caused by a stream of charged particles given off by the sun.
• The sun is 75% hydrogen and 25% helium.
• How hot is the sun? The temperature at the surface of the sun is 10,000 Fahrenheit (5600 Celsius). At the core of the sun, the temperature reaches 27,000,000 Fahrenheit (15,000,000 Celsius)!
• A Corona is more than a beer. The halo of light seen around the sun during a total solar eclipse is also called a corona.

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