How to type Black Sun
To type Black Sun (☀), press Alt + 9728 on Windows, holding Alt while typing the digits on the numeric keypad, or write ☀ in HTML. On any system you can copy it from this page, or enter its codepoint U+2600 directly: Ctrl+Shift+U then 2600 on Linux, or 2600 then Alt+X in Microsoft Word.
Black Sun With Rays
- Copy it
- Unicode
- U+2600
- Windows
- Alt + 9728 needs regedit
| Where | Shortcut | How |
|---|---|---|
| Windows | Alt + 9728 | Above 255, so Windows will not accept it as typed. Copy the character instead. |
| Mac | N/A | Press the keys together. |
| HTML | ☀ | Paste this into HTML source. |
| Unicode | U+2600 | BLACK SUN WITH RAYS |
Other symbols
☀ lives in the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+2600-U+26FF), weather, astrology, religion, games and a wide miscellany. Within Unicode it is classified as So, a symbol.
What Black Sun is used for
Unicode publishes a second list of names for ☀ in CLDR, the keywords its own search data offers rather than the formal name, and they are bright, rays, space and sunny. Those words are what somebody looking for this character is liable to type when Black Sun is not the name they know it by, and the search on the symbol lists matches them as well as the Unicode name.
What Unicode says about Black Sun
The standard recognises ☀ under another name as well: clear weather. That is a formal alias, not a nickname, which is why it turns up in other people's documentation for the same codepoint.
The code chart points from ☀ to sun (U+2609) and high brightness symbol (U+1F506). These are the characters the standard thinks you might have meant instead, which makes them the ones worth checking when Black Sun looks nearly right but not quite.
How Black Sun behaves in software
☀ takes one column in a terminal. It carries no direction of its own, so in a line that mixes English with Arabic or Hebrew it takes the direction of the text around it rather than forcing one.
What people ask about Black Sun
What is the symbol for gamma rays?
☀ is BLACK SUN WITH RAYS, encoded at U+2600. It is distinct from sun (U+2609) and high brightness symbol (U+1F506), which the chart lists beside it precisely because they are confused for one another.
Every way to write Black Sun
| Form | Value |
|---|---|
| Codepoint | U+2600 |
| Decimal | 9728 |
| UTF-8 bytes | E2 98 80 |
| UTF-16 bytes | 26 00 |
| HTML entity | ☀ |
| HTML numeric | ☀ or ☀ |
| CSS | \2600 |
| JavaScript | \u2600 |
| Python | \u2600 |
| URL-encoded | %E2%98%80 |
| SVG | 2600.svg · (SIL Open Font License) |
If ☀ arrives as ☀
Its three UTF-8 bytes E2 98 80 are being read one at a time as Windows-1252. The text is undamaged; the reader has to be told it is UTF-8.