EXPLORING OUR UNIVERSE THE SUN HEATHER C HUDAK Checkerboard Library An Imprint of Abdo Publishing abdopublishing com
MISSION EXPLORING THE SUN Have you ever played outside on a summer day You likely felt the sun's warm rays on your skin The sun is the biggest brightest object in our galaxy It brings heat light and energy to Earth Without the sun there would be no life here Our planet would be too cold and icy Super Star The sun is actually a star It's the closest star to Earth in the universe But it is still very far away Imagine there is a highway leading straight to the sun It would take more than 163 years to drive there Earth's next closest star is 250 000 times farther away than the sun Milky Way Marvel Most stars are part of large clusters called galaxies And there are billions of galaxies in the universe The sun
Earth's atmosphere bends light So we can still see the sun after it has disappeared over the horizon belongs to the Milky Way galaxy The sun spins on its axis as it orbits the center of the Milky Way Stuck in the Middle The sun is at the center of our solar system This giant ball of light makes up more than 99 8 percent of our solar system's mass It is about 109 times larger than Earth
