• Sunrays"Divine Vision / Vision Divina" is Copyrighted by Flickr user: pasotraspaso (Jesus Solana) under the Creative Commons Attribution license.
  
  

Distance

• The mean distance between the sun and Earth is one astronomical unit (92.9 million miles). Because the Earth's orbit is not quite round, this distance varies from 91.3 to 94.5 million miles.
  
  

Composition

• The sun is primarily composed of 92.1 percent hydrogen and 7.8 percent helium by volume. It also contains oxygen, nickel, iron, carbon and a number of other minerals.
  
  

Appearance

• While its appearance is actually white, the sunlight's interference with the Earth's atmosphere makes it appear for the most part yellow. The sun's energy comes from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium.
  
  

Location

• The sun is 24,000-26,000 light years from the Milky Way's galactic center, which it orbits once every 225 million to 250 million years; one sun day is 25.38 Earth days. The sun is 4.6 billion years old.
  
  

Size

• At its equator, the sun's circumference is approximately 109 times that of Earth, at 2,715,000 miles. Its surface area is 2,347,000,000,000 square miles (Earth times 11,900) and its gravity 28 times that of Earth.
  
  

Mass

• The sun's volume is equivalent to around 1,300,000 Earths; its mass is 4,385,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 pounds (332,900 Earths) and its density is 0.255 that of Earth.