With its big rays and cheerful face, the Sun lights up this Coloring Page just as it brightens our world every day. But did you know that the Sun is not a planet? It is a star: an enormous sphere of extremely hot gas at the center of our Solar System. Earth and the seven other planets travel around it, held in their orbits by the Sun’s powerful gravity.

The Sun is gigantic. Its diameter is about 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles), roughly 109 times the diameter of Earth! It is made mainly of hydrogen and helium, and deep inside its core, temperatures reach around 15 million degrees Celsius (27 million degrees Fahrenheit). Under these extreme conditions, nuclear fusion releases tremendous amounts of energy. Some of that energy eventually travels through space as light and heat. Sunlight takes about 8 minutes and 20 seconds to cross the roughly 150 million kilometers (93 million miles) between the Sun and Earth.

For this Coloring Page, bright yellows, oranges and reds are perfect for creating a glowing Sun. The pointed shapes around its happy face are a fun way to represent its rays, but the real Sun is not surrounded by pointed flames like the ones in the drawing. Try alternating warm colors to make your illustration look even more energetic.

The Sun is much closer to us than Saturn and its magnificent rings, but every planet in our Solar System depends on the Sun’s gravity to continue its journey around our star. Choose brilliant yellow, fiery orange or glowing red, and make this Printable Coloring Page shine!