Sunlight Takes More Than Eight Minutes to Reach Earth

Light is fast, but it is not instant, and the Sun is a long way off. NASA’s fact page for Earth lists the one-way light time to the Sun as 8.35 minutes. The same page gives the distance from the Sun as 93,327,712 miles, or 150,196,428 kilometers. Put together, the two numbers mean that light needs a little more than eight minutes to cross that gap. One consequence follows directly. The sunlight arriving on Earth at any moment left the Sun about eight minutes earlier, so we always see the Sun as it was a few minutes ago and not as it is right now. NASA’s page describes Earth as the third planet from the Sun and the fifth largest planet.