The Sun is the main star of our Solar System and is considered a primary element for life, since thanks to it we obtain light and heat. According to studies carried out by NASA, the size of the Sun is surprising and could house up to 109 planets of Earth on its surface, but there is still the question of what its exact size is.
Image: Atmospheric Imaging Assembly of NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory
The star of the Solar System
The Sun is one of the billions of stars that exist in the Universe, and due to its large amount of baryonic mass that generates a gravitational field of great magnitude, it manages to keep all of the Solar System in constant motion around its orbits. The energy that the Sun radiates comes from its core where matter is transformed, thanks to the fact that its pressure is more than a thousand times that of Earth’s. It is estimated that more than four million tons of matter are transformed inside it into energy per second and this radiates in the form of light through space.
The true size of the Sun
By comparing it with the space where the Sun’s rays are spread, we would obtain the relationship in which our planet takes advantage of the energy emitted by the star. As a result, we would have that the Earth only receives 3 billionths of said energy, which seems like a small amount. but, it is just enough to live perfectly. Thanks to these calculations, it is believed that the Sun’s energy could sustain the life of 3 billion planets like Earth.
To better understand the size of the Sun, it is necessary to know how great the distance is that separates us from it. We see it as small, about the size of a globe from Earth, but such a perspective does not mean that this is its real size, but rather, the dimensions are distorted due to the distance at which it is located.
Image: ShutterStock
The diameter of our planet is about 12,700 kilometers, so its circumference is 40 million meters. Now, the true diameter of the Sun is 150 million kilometers, which is equivalent to 109 times the diameter of the Earth.
To make it a little clearer, if a train ran 100 kilometers per hour, it would travel around the Earth in 16 and a half days, but if the same train at the same speed traveled around the Sun, it would do so in almost five years. Or if the Earth were a grain of sand, the Sun would be the size of a grapefruit.
The difference in volume between the Sun and the Earth is even more striking. According to the diameter data, the volume of the Sun is 1 million 300 thousand times larger than that of the Earth, but it is not equivalent to 1 million 300 thousand times the Earth’s mass, because the Sun is less dense than our planet. This is because their outer layers are very fluid and are in a gaseous state, consequently, they occupy more space even though their mass is not greater. Truly surprising facts about our host star.