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The Sun's Vital Statistics

The Sun is a rather commonplace celestial object. It is a star of ordinary dimensions and of ordinary brightness. But to observers on the Earth, the Sun remains an object of magnificent proportions. This fiery ball of superheated hydrogen and helium gases contains 99.9 percent of all matter in the Solar System, and a million Earths could fit inside the Sun, with room to spare.

On this page, we present some of the Sun's vital statistics. We think that you might be impressed with our magnificent star too.

 
Age At least 4.5 billion years, in present state.
   
Distance
   

Mean distance from Earth

1.5 X 10^8 km

Variation in distance through the year

+/- 1.5 percent
   
Diameter 1.39 X 10^6 km (or 109 times the diameter of the Earth and 9.75 times the diameter of Jupiter)
Volume 1.41 X 10^33 cm^3 (or 1.3 million times the volume of the Earth)
Mass 1.99 X 10^30 kg (or 333,000 times the weight of the Earth)
   
Magnetic Field Strengths (typical):
   

Sunspots

3000 G

Polar Field

1 G

Bright, chromospheric network

25 G

Emphemeral (unipolar) active regions

20 G

Chromospheric plages

200 G

Prominences

10 to 100 G

Earth

0.7 G at pole
   

Chemical composition of photosphere
(by weight, in percent):

   

Hydrogen

73.46

Helium

24.85

Oxygen

0.77

Carbon

0.29

Iron

0.16

Neon

0.12

Nitrogen

0.09

Silicon

0.07

Magnesium

0.05

Sulfur

0.10
   
Density (water=1):
   

Mean density of entire Sun

1.41 g/cm^3

Interior (center of the Sun)

160 g/cm^3

Surface (photosphere)

10^{-9} g/cm^3

Chromosphere

10^{-12} g/cm^3

Low corona

10^{-16} g/cm^3

Sea level atmosphere of Earth

10^{-3} g/cm^3
   
Solar radiation:
   

Entire Sun

3.83 X 10^23 kW

Unit area of surface of Sun

6.29 X 10^4 kW/m^2

Received at top of Earth's atmosphere

0.136 W/cm^2
   
Surface brightness of the Sun (photosphere):
   

Compared to full Moon

398,000 times

Compared to inner corona

300,000 times

Compared to outer corona

10^10 times

Compared to daytime sky on Pikes Peak

100,000 times

Compared to daytime sky at Orange, NJ

1000 times
   
Temperature:
   

Interior (center)

15,000,000 K

Surface (effective) of Sun

5800 K

Sunspot umbra (typical)

4240 K

Penumbra (typical)

5680 K

Chromosphere

4300 to 50,000 K

Corona

800,000 to 3,000,000 K
   
Rotation (as seen from the Earth):
   

Of solar equator

26.8 days

At solar latitude 30 deg

28.2 days

At solar latitude 60 deg

30.8 days

At solar latitude 75 deg

31.8 days


Source of these numbers are from the book: A New Sun: The Solar Results From Skylab, by John Eddy, NASA SP-402, 1979, page 37. The effective solar temperature came from Lang's Astrophysical Quantities, pg. 162, 1964.

Another Internet site with a smaller "stats" table, but a nice overview of the important features of the Sun, can be found at Calvin Hamilton's Views of the Solar System: Sun.

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