The Sun makes up 99.86% of the mass of the solar system — everything else, including Earth, is rounding error.
Every second, the Sun converts about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium and emits the energy difference as light, heat, and radiation. A tiny fraction reaches Earth — but it's enough to power every weather pattern, every photosynthesizing plant, and indirectly every meal you've ever eaten.
Its core temperature is roughly 27 million °F. Its surface, by comparison, is a chilly 10,000 °F. The corona above the surface flips that pattern: it's somehow hotter than the surface itself, a puzzle physicists haven't fully cracked.
These verified facts cover the Sun's structure, behavior, eventual death, and the surprising things it does in the meantime — from solar flares to the strange physics of its missing-temperature inversion.
Below: every fact from our verified archive that touches this topic. Each is independently sourced; click through to its dedicated page.