The closest humans have gotten to the Sun is via NASA's Parker Solar Probe, which has flown through the Sun's outer atmosphere (corona), reaching as close as 3.8 million miles (6.1 million kilometers) from its surface, a feat achieved in late 2024 and early 2025, breaking its own previous records and allowing it to "touch" the Sun's corona for the first time.
NASA's Parker Solar Probe has taken the closest ever images to the Sun, captured just 3.8 million miles from the solar surface.
Yes, when you look at the Sun, you see it as it was about 8 minutes ago because light travels at a finite speed, taking roughly 8.3 minutes to cover the distance from the Sun to Earth, acting like a cosmic time machine, showing us the past of all celestial objects. This means if the Sun vanished, we wouldn't know for 8 minutes, and it also applies to everything else in space, with farther objects showing us even older history.
As defined by the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a light-year is the distance that light travels in vacuum in one Julian year (365.25 days). Despite its inclusion of the word "year", the term is not a unit of time.
Looking toward the sun we thus see a brilliant white light while looking away we would see only the darkness of empty space. Since there is virtually nothing in space to scatter or re-radiate the light to our eye, we see no part of the light and the sky appears to be black.
The planet that experiences 42 years of darkness (and 42 years of light) at its poles is Uranus, due to its extreme axial tilt of about 98 degrees, making it "roll" on its side as it orbits the Sun. This unique tilt causes each pole to face the Sun continuously for 42 Earth years, followed by 42 years in darkness, while the equator experiences more typical day-night cycles.
Even a small move closer to the sun could have a huge impact. That's because warming would cause glaciers to melt, raising sea levels and flooding most of the planet. Without land to absorb some of the sun's heat, temperatures on Earth would continue to rise.
In 2025, the Sun reached or was near its Solar Maximum (peak activity) for Solar Cycle 25, leading to increased sunspots, powerful solar flares (like X-class flares causing radio blackouts), and geomagnetic storms, resulting in spectacular auroras but also potential disruptions to power grids and satellites, with scientists tracking events like the November 2025 solar storm as part of this heightened activity.
Why do you think getting to space is so difficult when it's only 62 miles away? Answer: Space is 62 vertical miles away. It takes a lot of energy to overcome gravity for that distance and gain the speed required to stay in orbit (approximately 17,500 miles per hour) once you've arrived.
Here's what that means. Voyager 1, NASA's deep-space probe, could soon become the first spacecraft to reach a historic milestone. In November 2026, the probe will be one light-day from Earth.
A new NASA study shows that the Sun has been waking up from a period of low activity. Solar activity is known to fluctuate in cycles of 11 years, but there are also longer-term variations that can last decades. Our Sun's activity steadily decreased from the 1980s until 2008.
Traveling from one star to another is currently impossible to achieve within a human lifetime. But some projects are designing ways to propel payloads to the nearest star system (Alpha Centauri) using beams of electrons.
How could you determine what color the Sun is as seen from Earth? It is a common misconception that the Sun is yellow, or orange or even red. However, the Sun is essentially all colors mixed together, which appear to our eyes as white. This is easy to see in pictures taken from space.
The surface of Pluto is extremely cold, so it's unlikely that life could exist there. At such cold temperatures, water, which is vital for life as we know it, is essentially rock-like. Pluto's interior is warmer, however, and some think there could even be an ocean deep inside.
Neptune is dark, cold, and very windy. It's the last of the planets in our solar system. It's more than 30 times as far from the sun as Earth is. Neptune is very similar to Uranus.
On March 23, 2178, Pluto will complete its first full orbit around the Sun since its discovery. Of the five dwarf planets in the Solar System – including Eris, Ceres, Makemake, and Haumea – Pluto is easily the best-known due to its brief categorization as a regular planet.
Adaptation to microgravity during space flights imposes significant challenges on the physiological, physical, and psychological well-being of astronauts. Pain has been frequently reported by astronauts during space missions, immediately after returning to Earth, and even in the years following their flights.
About 95% of the universe is "invisible" because it's composed of dark matter (around 27%) and dark energy (around 68%), which don't emit, absorb, or reflect light, unlike the normal matter (stars, planets, us) that makes up the visible 5%. Dark matter's presence is inferred through its gravitational pull on visible galaxies, while dark energy is a mysterious force causing the universe's accelerated expansion.
In this case "temperature" requires physical matter to be there to feel it; the space between the Earth and the Sun is "cold" because there is nothing there to be warmed.