What is the light travel time from the Sun to Earth in minutes?

Light takes about 8.3 minutes to travel from the Sun to Earth.

Using the average Earth–Sun distance of one astronomical unit—about 149.6 million kilometers—and light’s vacuum speed of 299,792 kilometers per second gives roughly 499 seconds, or 8 minutes 19 seconds. Trivia references usually round that interval to 8.3 minutes.

The exact travel time varies slightly during the year because Earth’s orbit is elliptical. Sunlight takes approximately 8 minutes 10 seconds when Earth is nearer the Sun and about 8 minutes 27 seconds when Earth is farther away. The 8.3-minute figure is therefore an average, not a permanently fixed delay.

This delay means we see the Sun as it was a little over eight minutes earlier. The same principle applies to solar eruptions: light and electromagnetic signals arrive first, while charged particles from a solar storm can take much longer. The light-crossing time is also why the astronomical unit is a useful distance benchmark.