The Sun is one of billions of stars in the Milky Way galaxy. But here on Earth, it’s everything. Without the Sun, we’d have no food, no flowers, and no calendars. We’d also have no weather—and no sunburns. Our world would be just a frozen rock floating in space.
In early times, people thought the Sun was a powerful god or goddess. But in 430 B.C., the Greek scientist Anaxagoras (an-aks-AG-oo-ras) put forward the idea that the Sun was a flaming rock about 100 miles wide.
Since then, we’ve learned much more about the Sun. Now we know it’s a ball of hot gas. It’s also so huge that more than a million Earths could fit inside it.
Of the billions of stars in our galaxy, the Sun is closest to Earth. It gives us the heat and light that power our planet and makes all life here possible.
