Here's something rather interesting about the sun, and stars in general, in regard to light. A single photon (a particle of light) takes about 8 minutes and nineteen seconds to travel from the surface of the sun to the surface of the Earth. The photon, is, of course, traveling at the speed of light through space, and the earth is about 8.3 light-seconds away from the sun (and light travels at a staggering 670,600,000 miles per hour). However, after that photon is created at the center of the sun as a result of fusion at the sun's core, it takes somewhere between one hundred thousand to ten million years to make it to the sun's surface.