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The Sun is 150 million km away. That's a greater distance than any human has ever travelled.
Every second 1.8 trillion trillion trillion photons of sunlight hit the surface of Earth and, despite that distance, they still make the plants grow and feel warm against your skin.
And honestly, I never stop being amazed by this.
150 million km is a tricky distance to wrap your head around, so here's a way to think about how far away the Sun is.
The distance from New York to Tokyo is 10,879 km. If you took 180 long haul flights between New York and Tokyo every year, it would take just over 76 years for your combined flights to match the distance between Earth and the Sun.
(Image credit: NASA/SDO)
@InvaderXan here's another factoid to put the scale in perspective: the sun emits energy in all directions, but everything that's ever lived on the earth got all its energy from one incredibly tiny spherical sector (shown in yellow) between us and the sun
@io Makes you realise how much energy a star actually emits, huh?
@InvaderXan one alternative is that they'd travel a shorter distance and we'd end up like Venus 