The Sun is the center of the Solar System and the celestial body which all other astronomical bodies orbit.

Description

The Sun is a large main sequence star at the center of the Solar System which begins each loop as a standard yellow star. As the time progresses in the loop, the Sun ages and grows. At 22 minutes into the loop, the sun explodes in a violent supernova, with the cycle ending shortly after.

Life Cycle

The Sun follows the typical lifespan of a large main sequence star, albeit accelerated for game play purposes.

Yellow Phase

Prior to the beginning of the loop, as seen in the Radio Tower images, the sun was much more yellow than it is during play, indicating that the Sun has already become a subgiant shortly before the loop's beginning.

Subgiant Phase

At the beginning of the loop and for the majority of the cycle, the star is colored orange. It is the only stellar phase where the Sun Station is accessible.

Red Giant

Roughly 12 minutes into the cycle, the Sun grows significantly and turns red to become a Red Giant. It grows to roughly twice its normal size and engulfs the Sun Station. After 21 minutes in the cycle, the Sun enters its final moments as the End Times theme plays. At this point, there is 60 seconds left until the supernova.

Supernova

After 22 minutes into the cycle, the Sun collapses due its inability to resist its own gravity. It collapses in on itself to form into a relatively small sphere for a brief moment before exploding outward violently with a blue flash. The Supernova grows and accelerates to quickly encompass the entire Solar System.

While the player can escape the blast radius of the Supernova, they will still die with an alternative screen fade as their memories are uploaded to the Ash Twin Project. Escaping from the Supernova after removing the core of Ash Twin will trigger the Isolation Ending.

Features

Sun Station

The Sun's only noteworthy feature is the Sun Station, an artificial satellite constructed by the Nomai in an incredibly close and quick orbit around the Sun. The Sun station was initially designed to induce a Supernova in the sun, however it ultimately failed in accomplishing this. The Sun Station is only accessible until the Sun becomes a red giant, as it is destroyed when the sun enters its red giant phase.

The Sun Station is normally accessed by a teleporter, however the later updates to Outer Wilds contain the Hotshot achievement for manually landing on the Sun Station. This requires a certain degree of skill, as the close proximity to the Sun means the player is under immense amounts of gravity along with having to account for the rapid orbit of the station.

Notes & Trivia

• There is an achievement on the Xbox One, Playstation, and Steam versions of Outer Wilds called Mica's Wrath. This achievement is earned by flying Mica's model spaceship from The Village into the Sun (or Hollow's Lantern).
• After the supernova what resembles a white dwarf or neutron star is left behind. These are the remnants of when a star goes supernova, but are too small for the core to collapse into a black hole.
  • However, this is actually a bug where the Sun's glow effect isn't unloaded. In fact, red solar flares can be seen on the Sun's remains if you look closely.
• Interestingly, all of the planets appear to be intact after the Sun goes supernova. Maybe they will survive until the end of the universe, orbiting the Sun's remains forever; or maybe, the extreme heat around the Sun's remains will slowly erode away all of the planets until they are all destroyed, like what happens to the chunks of Brittle Hollow around the White Hole, the player's ship, or The Protagonist. That last option seems likely as the Nomai mention that if the Sun Station were to be fired and the Ash Twin Project didn't work, they'd destroy the entire solar system.