The Sun

The sun is a star around which the Earth and the other components of the solar system revolve. It is the dominant body of the system, constituting more than 99 percent of its entire mass. The sun is the source of an enormous, amount of energy a portion of which provides the Earth with the light and heat necessary to support life. The sun exists in the outer part of the Milky Way Galaxy and was formed from material that had been processed inside a supernova. The sun is not, as is often said, a small star. Although it falls midway between the biggest and smallest stars of its type, there are so many dwarf stars that the sun falls in the top 5 percent of stars in the neighbourhood that immediately surrounds it. The sun is classified as a G2-V star, G2 standing for the second hottest stars of the yellow G class and V representing a dwarf star. The surface temperature of the Sun is about 5,800 Kelvins (K).