Sunlight takes about eight minutes and 20 seconds to reach Earth.

The Sun is about 150 million kilometers from Earth. Light travels at a speed of 299,792 kilometers per second. If you divide the distance by the speed, the result is about 499 seconds. This equals 8 minutes and 19 seconds.Earth does not move around the Sun in a perfect circle. Its path is an oval shape called an ellipse. This means the distance between the Earth and the Sun changes throughout the year. At the closest point, light arrives in 8 minutes and 10 seconds. At the farthest point, it takes 8 minutes and 27 seconds.The light we see starts as energy deep inside the Sun's core. This energy is created by nuclear fusion. It takes a very long time for this energy to reach the Sun's surface. Particles of light, called photons, bump into atoms millions of times. This slow process can take 100,000 years.Once the light reaches the Sun's surface, it finally moves in a straight line through space. It travels through the vacuum of space until it hits Earth's atmosphere. Because of this delay, we always see the Sun as it was in the past. If the Sun suddenly stopped shining, we would not know for over eight minutes.