Question: How hot is the sun?

Ciarán O'Brien answered on 13 Nov 2014:

The sun’s temperature varies a huge amount depending on where you measure, but even at its coolest it’s still really, really, REALLY hot.

The core of the sun, where most of the nuclear fusion happens to generate light and heat, is somewhere around 15,700,000 degrees Celsius.

The energy released at the core takes a long time to get from there to the surface, as it bounces around the various spinning layers of plasma (matter so hot it found a fourth state beyond solid/liquid/gas) and temperature around that area can be between 2,000,000 and 10,000,000 degrees Celsius, depending on how close to the core you are.

At the surface of the sun, where all this energy can break free and head out into space, the temperature is much cooler at just around 6,000 degrees Celsius, which is still ridiculously hot.

For some reason that isn’t well understood yet, the atmosphere above the surface of the sun is actually a lot hotter, and can get up to 1,000,000 degrees again in the corona.

So yeah, the sun is insanely hot. Make sure you visit at night when it’s nice and cool 😛