Sun

star at the centre of the Solar System

10 dated entries naming Sun, drawn from 10 separate years between 200 BCE and 2024 CE. Nothing here is written by us: each line is the sentence a Wikipedia year article used, and the link beside it opens the exact revision.

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2nd century BC

200 BCEThe first good measurement of the distance between Earth and the Sun is made by Eratosthenes (approximate date). By studying lunar eclipses, his result is roughly 150 000 000 km. The currently accepted value is 149 597 870 691 ± 30 metres.source

4th century

391Flames destroy the great Library of Alexandria, established in the Mouseion in the fourth century BC. Among the items lost in the fire are works of science, including parchments by the Greek astronomer Aristarchus of Samos asserting that the Earth orbits the Sun, and dozens of dramatic works by Euripides and Sophocles.source

17th century

1651William Gilbert's A New Philosophy of Our Sublunar World is published posthumously. It theorises that the fixed stars are not all the same distance from Earth, and that the force of magnetism holds the planets in orbit around the Sun.source

18th century

176913 April – first voyage of James Cook: James Cook arrives in Tahiti on the ship HM Bark Endeavour, preparing to observe the transit of the planet Venus, which takes place on 3 June. After the voyage, the data is found to be inaccurate in determining the distance between the Sun and Earth.source

19th century

1866June 5 – Calculations indicate Pluto (not known at this time) reaches its only aphelion (furthest point from the Sun) between 1618 and August 2113.source
186818 August - The element later named as helium is first detected in the spectrum of the Sun's chromosphere by astronomer Jules Janssen during a total eclipse in Guntur, India, but assumed to be sodium (on 20 October English astronomer Norman Lockyer identifies it).source
18826 December – A rare transit of Venus across the disc of the Sun is visible from Australia, and many scientific parties arrive from around the world to observe and record the transit. The next occurrence was June 2004.source

21st century

2012July 23 – The Solar storm of 2012 is an unusually large coronal mass ejection emitted by the Sun which barely misses the Earth by nine days. If it had hit, it would have caused up to US$2.6 trillion in damages to electrical equipment worldwide.source
2018August 12 – NASA launches the uncrewed Parker Solar Probe to study the Sun at close range and the solar wind.source
2024December 24 – The Parker Solar Probe breaks the previous record set in 2018 for the closest artificial object to the Sun by 6.1 million kilometers (3.8 million miles), becoming the closest and first man-made object to approach and "touch" the Sun.source

Sun