Mondo Knows Facts
Sunlight takes roughly eight minutes to reach Earth
Light travels 150 million kilometres across space at 300,000 kilometres per second
Light travels through the vacuum of space at approximately 299,792 kilometres per second. Because Earth orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 149.6 million kilometres, photons emitted from the solar surface require about eight minutes and twenty seconds to complete the journey to Earth.
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Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: sunlight, speed of light, earth
Sunlight takes roughly eight minutes to reach Earth: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Light travels 150 million kilometres across space at 300,000 kilometres per second. The figure is taken from NASA Science, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a space fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Space shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.