/year

Sun

star at the centre of the Solar System

6 dated entries naming Sun, drawn from 6 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

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

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

Named in the same entries