The sun exerts a dominating influence on many aspects of the environment of mankind. It is to the sun that humans have looked for thousands of years as an object of worship and as the means of determining the patterns of their lives.
It is only in the past few centuries that science has been able to tell us much about the real sun - its size, its energy, its age and its future. Despite the advances of science in our knowledge, the statistics of the sun remain truly impressive compared with our everyday experience.
The following table gives us some of the important details of the sun.
Property Value
Radius 700,000 kilometres
Volume 1.4 billion billion cubic kilometres
Surface Area 6.1 billion billion square kilometres
Mass 2000 billion billion billion kilograms
Distance from Earth 149 million kilometres
Angular Diameter from Earth 0.53 degrees of arc
Gravity at Surface 290 metres/second/second
Escape Velocity at Surface 618 kilometers/second
Average Velocity 1400 kilograms/cubic meter
Total Radiated Power 380,000 billion billion kilowatts
Power at Earth 1380 watts/square metre/second
Effective Temperature 5770 degrees Kelvin
Solar Spectral Type G2V
Apparent Rotation Period 27.3 days (varies with latitude)
Age 5000 million years (approx)
