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 kilometres/second
Average Velocity	1400 kilograms/cubic metre
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)

Material Prepared by Richard Thompson. © Copyright IPS - Radio and Space Services.