Question

How long does it take for sunlight to reach earth? Show Work!

Answer 1

Answer: The Sun is 93 million miles away, so sunlight takes 8 and 1/3 minutes to get to us.


Light from the Sun takes about 5 and 1/2 hours to reach it and roughly the same time to return to Earth. By the time the light reaches us, it has spread out so much that the planet looks very dim, and requires a good telescope to spot. Photo of Pluto and its moon Charon, as seen with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994.

Sunlight travels at the speed of light. Photons emitted from the surface of the Sun need to travel across the vacuum of space to reach our eyes. The short answer is that it takes sunlight an average of 8 minutes and 20 seconds to travel from the Sun to the Earth

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Answer 2

Answer: 8.3 minutes

Explanation:

The time t may be obtained using the speed distance equation s=d/t. Rearranged to solve for time it would be: t=s/v, where s is the distance between the Sun and Earth and v is the speed of light.