Life Trove: sun

Ode to the sun

Before almost everything else I have ever loved, there was the Sun. Before the first human opened their eyes, before the first bird lifted into the sky or the first flower turned towards the light, it was already burning—pouring its warmth into the darkness and awakening a small blue world. Every sunrise is therefore both utterly ordinary and quietly miraculous: the return of the light, the unveiling of colour and the beginning of another day.

As a photographer, I am mesmerised by light—by the way it transforms an ordinary landscape, illuminates a face or turns clouds into fire. For me, there is almost nothing more wondrous than a sunrise or sunset. Each is fleeting and unrepeatable, the sky becoming a vast canvas of gold, crimson, pink and violet before changing again moments later. No matter how many I witness or photograph, I never tire of them. They remind me to stop, look and be fully present for the brief beauty unfolding before me.

And there are few sensations more wonderful than turning my face towards the Sun and feeling its warmth upon my skin. It is such a simple pleasure, yet it feels almost like a blessing—a direct physical connection with the star that makes our existence possible. Its light has travelled across the emptiness of space to reach this particular place, this particular moment, and me.

The Sun is the great giver. Its energy moves through forests and oceans, through clouds and rivers, through every leaf that unfolds and every creature that breathes. It warms our world, guides the seasons and paints everything with light and shadow. The food we eat, the winds that cross the planet and the countless forms of life surrounding us all trace their story back to this magnificent star. We do not merely live beneath the Sun; we live because of it.

It has also illuminated the entire human story. The Sun shone upon our earliest ancestors as they stepped onto open plains, upon the first cities rising beside rivers, and upon every journey, discovery, celebration and sorrow that followed. Civilisations worshipped it, poets praised it and artists tried to capture its radiance. It has been a god, a clock, a compass, a symbol of hope and rebirth—and the silent witness to every life ever lived.

Yet for all its familiarity, the Sun remains almost beyond comprehension: a colossal furnace suspended in the blackness of space, transforming matter into light and sending that light across the void to reach us. We may understand something of the science, but wonder begins where mere understanding ends. To stand in the warmth of sunlight is to feel my connection to something immense—to remember that I am part of a living world, circling a star, held within a universe more astonishing than I can ever fully grasp.

So here is my ode to the Sun: our nearest star, our faithful companion and the blazing heart of our little corner of the cosmos. Each morning it reminds me that darkness is never the whole story, that life depends upon gifts we did nothing to earn, and that even the most familiar things become wondrous when we truly stop and look.

Fascinating facts about the sun

The Sun is a star. It looks unlike the stars of the night sky only because it is so much closer to us. In cosmic terms, it is a fairly ordinary, medium-sized star—but to Earth, it is everything.
It is approximately 4.6 billion years old. The Sun formed when an immense cloud of gas and dust collapsed under its own gravity, with the leftover material eventually becoming the planets, moons, asteroids and comets.
The Sun contains 99.8% of all the mass in the solar system. The planets, moons, asteroids, comets—and everything humanity has ever created—share the tiny fraction that remains.
Around 1.3 million Earths could fit inside it. The Sun is about 1.4 million kilometres across—roughly 109 Earths placed side by side—while more than 330,000 Earths would be required to equal its mass.
Sunlight takes about eight minutes and twenty seconds to reach us. This means that whenever we look at the Sun—through proper eye protection—we are seeing it as it appeared more than eight minutes earlier.
The Sun’s core reaches approximately 15 million°C. The pressure and heat there are so extreme that hydrogen nuclei fuse together to form helium, releasing the energy that ultimately becomes sunlight.
Every second, the Sun converts around 600 million tonnes of hydrogen into helium. About four million tonnes of matter disappear in the process, transformed directly into energy according to Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc²
The energy warming your face today may have begun its journey around 170,000 years ago. Energy released in the core is repeatedly absorbed and re-emitted as it struggles through the Sun’s dense interior. Once it finally escapes the surface, it needs only another eight minutes or so to reach Earth.
The Sun has no solid surface. What we perceive as its surface is the photosphere—a glowing layer of plasma about 400 kilometres thick, with a temperature of roughly 5,500°C. There would be nowhere upon it to stand.
Its outer atmosphere is mysteriously hotter than its surface. Although the photosphere is approximately 5,500°C, the corona can reach around two million°C. Why the Sun becomes hotter as one moves farther from its surface remains one of solar science’s great puzzles.
The Sun does not rotate as a single solid object. Its equator completes a rotation in about 25 Earth days, while the polar regions take approximately 36 days. Its surface is constantly twisting, flowing and churning.
The Sun is carrying us through the Milky Way at astonishing speed. Our entire solar system travels around the centre of the galaxy at roughly 828,000 kilometres per hour—yet one complete galactic orbit still takes about 230 million years.
The Sun has an approximately 11-year cycle of activity. The number of sunspots rises and falls as its immense magnetic field changes, with the most active periods producing more solar flares and eruptions.
Solar storms can create beauty on Earth. Vast clouds of magnetised particles can be hurled from the Sun at more than 1.6 million kilometres per hour. When they interact with Earth’s magnetic field, they can ignite the magnificent aurora australis and aurora borealis—although powerful storms can also disrupt satellites, communications and electrical grids.
In a sense, Earth exists inside the Sun’s atmosphere. The solar wind creates an enormous magnetic bubble called the heliosphere, which stretches beyond the planets. Our entire world—and almost all of the solar system—travels within this vast, invisible extension of the Sun.