Next up: Sun 5 million km away

Sun

Star

The star at the center of our solar system. A nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma that contains 99.86% of the total mass of the solar system.

Distance from the Sun
Measured center-to-center - from the center of one body to the center of the other, not surface to surface. This is the average orbital distance (semi-major axis); real orbits are elliptical, so the true distance varies over time.
0 km
Diameter
Diameter is twice the radius. Planets are not perfect spheres - their spin flattens them into oblate spheroids, slightly wider across the equator than from pole to pole. This uses the mean (volumetric) diameter.
1,392,680 km across (109.3× the size of Earth)
Surface temperature
An approximate mean surface temperature. Real temperatures swing dramatically with location, time of day, and season. Gas giants and stars have no solid surface, so this is measured at a reference level (the 1-bar pressure layer for gas giants, the visible photosphere for stars).
5,499°C (5,772 K)
Did you know?

The Sun's core temperature is about 15 million °C - hot enough to fuse hydrogen into helium.

Let Us Play Among the Stars

Fly me to the Moon - darling, why stop there? Past the Moon, right on by Jupiter & Mars, all the way out to Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our own. This interactive experience swings you through the actual distances between the Sun, the planets, and everything beyond - no shortcuts, no artistic license, just the real thing, to true scale. Every pixel here is 500 real kilometers. And even after all that traveling, you'll have covered just 0.004% of the Milky Way galaxy - and 0.000000005% of the observable universe.

Here's my hand - a scroll, a swipe, a trackpad will do just fine - let's swing on out there →

Stars

Planets

Dwarf planets

Moons

Spacecraft

Interstellar objects

Regions

Space Facts

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