our solar system, which contains just 1 star, is a relative rarity. 85% of the solar systems in this universe have 2 or more.

bees don't buzz during an eclipse.

when you get a sunburn, the solar radiation doesn't directly kill your skin cells. instead, the radiation damages their dna, and the cells commit suicide to avoid becoming cancerous.

this doesn't always work.

10 billion years from now, when our sun is no longer capable of sustained nuclear fusion, it will swell to 250 times its current size and explode. leaving behind a cloud of gas and dust. our own planet will burn up long before then.

1 billion years from now - or maybe a little less - our sun will become so hot that it will boil away the earth's oceans and vaporize all living things.

space is big. how big? if our sun was the size of the head of a pin, the next closest star would still be 9 miles away.

people who get most of their exposure to sunlight early in the day have a lower risk of becoming obese, independent of their age, physical activity or diet.

to correctly use sunblock and get the full spf value, an average adult male has to cover his entire body with at least 1 ounce of it.

66% of 70-year-olds who were born and live in australia will develop skin cancer.

no matter which direction it's traveling, a comet's 'tail' always points away from the sun.

exposure to sunlight increases your testosterone levels.

it can take 1 million years for a single ray of light to get from the sun's radiative zone (the sun's middle layer) to the surface.

copernicus wasn't the first to discover that the earth revolves around the sun. a greek fellow named aristarchus figured that out 1,800 years earlier.

the moon doesn't have a permanent dark side. because it's tidally locked, it constantly faces us, not the sun. every part of the moon gets sunlight at some point.

our planet doesn't get closer to the sun in summer - it's just that the northern hemisphere tilts in that direction during part of the year, and the southern hemisphere does the same during the other part of the year. it's not proximity - it's all about the tilt.

seen from space, our sun is white, not yellow. it's our atmosphere - and photoshopped nasa images - that make it appear yellow. also, it's not burning (a chemical reaction), it's glowing (a nuclear reaction); it's essentially a series of nuclear explosions.

r135a1 is the unimaginative monicker of the largest star we know of. it's 256 times bigger than our sun, almost 9 million times brighter, and bright blue.

it takes 492 seconds for that ray of sunlight to reach earth.

nasa has discovered 6 stars that are so cool that you could touch them without getting burned.

our sun isn't always mr. nice guy. in 1859, there was a coronal mass ejection (and explosion of solar gas and radiation) so intense that it gave electrical shocks to telegraph operators and set their equipment on fire. we missed an even larger ejection in 2012 by just 9 days. if it had struck the earth, it would have rendered most electrical devices useless - including telephones - and damaged our electrical grid so badly that it is estimated that it would have been 4 to 9 years before most people would have had electricity again. (by which time the roving tribes of cannibals would have eaten them.)