The sun is a very interesting space object, as well as scary and mysterious. In our Solar System, the Sun is the largest object. Here are some interesting facts.
Quoted from Live Science, the Sun covers 99.8% of the mass of our Solar System. The size is so large, its diameter is about 109 times the diameter of Earth. About a million Earths could fit in it.
The visible surface of the Sun, the temperature is in the range of 5,500 degrees Celsius, while the temperature at its core is very hot, penetrating more than 15 million degrees Celsius.
As an illustration, according to NASA, to match the energy produced by the Sun, 100 billion tons of dynamite must be detonated every second.
According to scientists, the Sun is only one of more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy. Scientists estimate the Sun is still young compared to other stars, born about 4.6 billion years ago.
On the other hand when it comes to stars, there are a lot in this universe. The Milky Way alone has so many, even though there are so many other galaxies. "The total number of stars in the universe is more than the grains of sand on all the beaches on Earth," said American astronomer Carl Sagan, who rose to fame when he said it in the 1980s.
It is estimated that the Sun's nuclear fuel is still sufficient for another 5 billion years. That's when the Sun is said to be reaching the end of its life, expanding and then becoming a dwarf star.
Like most other stars, the Sun is made mainly of hydrogen, then helium. The rest comes from 7 elements, namely oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, magnesium, iron and silicon.
There is still much that has not been revealed about the Sun so that it becomes one of the research centers for NASA and other space agencies.
NASA's flagship vehicle that flies close to the Sun is called the Parker Solar Probe. Meanwhile, a similar plane that approaches the sun is the European Space Agency's (ESA) Solar Orbiter.
