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At the distance at which our sun is located from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, Earth and the rest of our solar system are moving at a speed of about 170 miles per second around the center. At its center, the sun has a density of over a hundred times that of water, and a temperature of 10-20 million degrees Celsius. All the coal, oil, gas, and wood on Earth would only keep the Sun burning for a few days. An area of the Sun's surface the size of a postage stamp shines with the power of 1,500,000 candles. Your fingernails can turn yellow from wearing nail polish and from the sun. If the entire solar system were the size of a quarter, the sun would be visible only under a microscope, and the nearest star would be 300 feet away. The Sun provides our planet with 126,000,000,000,000 horsepower of energy every day. If the earth were the size of a quarter, the sun would be as large as a 9 foot ball and would be located a football field distance from the earth. More than 1 million earths would fit inside the sun. 99% of our solar systems mass is concentrated in the sun. The sun is 330,330 times larger than the earth! |