nteresting Facts About the Sun

by FR A S E R C A IN on SEPTEMBER 11, 2008

The Sun as viewed by the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (NASA/SOHO)

Think you know everything there is to know about the Sun? Think again. Here are 10 facts about the Sun, collected in no particular order. Some you might already know, and others will be totally new to you. 1. The Sun is the Solar System We live on the planet, so we think its an equal member of the

Solar System. But that couldnt be further from the truth. The reality is that the mass of the Sun accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the Solar System. And most of that final 0.2% comes from Jupiter. So the mass of the Earth is a fraction of a fraction of the mass of the Solar System. Really, we barely exist. 2. And the Sun is mostly hydrogen and helium If you could take apart the Sun and pile up its different elements, youd find that 74% of its mass comes from hydrogen. with 24% helium. The remaining 2% is includes trace amounts of iron, nickel, oxygen, and all the other elements we have in the Solar System. In other words, the Solar System is mostly made of hydrogen. 3. The Sun is pretty bright. We know of some amazingly large and bright stars, like Eta Carina and Betelgeuse. But theyre incredibly far away. Our own Sun is a relatively bright star. If you could take the 50 closest stars within 17 light-years of the Earth, the Sun would be the 4th brightest star in absolute terms. Not bad at all. 4. The Sun is huge, but tiny With a diameter of 109 times the size the Earth, the Sun makes a really big sphere. You could fit 1.3 million Earths inside the Sun. Or you could flatten out 11,990 Earths to cover the surface of the Sun. Thats big, but there are some much bigger stars out there. For example, the biggest star that we know of would almost reach Saturn if it were placed inside the Solar System. 5. The Sun is middle aged Astronomers think that the Sun (and the planets) formed from the solar nebula about 4.59 billion years ago. The Sun is in the main sequence stage right now, slowly using up its hydrogen fuel. But at some point, in about 5 billion years from now, the Sun will enter the red giant phase, where it swells up

to consume the inner planets including Earth (probably). It will slough off its outer layers, and then shrink back down to a relatively tiny white dwarf. 6. The Sun has layers The Sun looks like a burning ball of fire, but it actually has an internal structure. The visible surface we can see is called the photosphere, and heats up to a temperature of about 6,000 degrees Kelvin. Beneath that is the convective zone, where heat moves slowly from the inner Sun to the surface, and cooled material falls back down in columns. This region starts at 70% of the radius of the Sun. Beneath the convection zone is the radiative zone. In this zone, heat can only travel through radiation. The core of the Sun extends from the center of the Sun to a distance of 0.2 solar radii. This is where temperatures reach 13.6 million degrees Kelvin, and molecules of hydrogen are fused into helium. 7. The Sun is heating up, and will kill all life on Earth It feels like the Sun has been around forever, unchanging, but thats not true. The Sun is actually slowly heating up. Its becoming 10% more luminous every billion years. In fact, within just a billion years, the heat from the Sun will be so intense that liquid water wont exist on the surface of the Earth. Life on Earth as we know it will be gone forever. Bacteria might still live on underground, but the surface of the planet will be scorched and uninhabited. Itll take another 7 billion years for the Sun to reach its red giant phase before it actually expands to the point that it engulfs the Earth and destroys the entire planet. 8. Different parts of the Sun rotate at different speeds Unlike the planets, the Sun is great big sphere of hydrogen gas. Because of this, different parts of the Sun rotate at different speeds. You can see how fast the surface is rotating by tracking the movement of sunspots across the surface.

Regions at the equator take 25 days to complete one rotation, while features at the poles can take 36 days. And the inside of the Sun seems to take about 27 days. 9. The outer atmosphere is hotter than the surface The surface of the Sun reaches temperatures of 6,000 Kelvin. But this is actually much less than the Suns atmosphere. Above the surface of the Sun is a region of the atmosphere called the chromosphere, where temperatures can reach 100,000 K. But thats nothing. Theres an even more distant region called the corona, which extends to a volume even larger than the Sun itself. Temperatures in the corona can reach 1 million K. 10. There are spacecraft observing the Sun right now. The most famous spacecraft sent to observe the Sun is the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, built by NASA and ESA, and launched in December, 1995. SOHO has been continuously observing the Sun since then, and sent back countless images. A more recent mission is NASAs STEREO spacecraft. This was actually two spacecraft, launched in October 2006. These twin spacecraft were designed to watch the same activity on the Sun from two different vantage points, to give a 3-D perspective of the Suns activity, and allow astronomers to better predict space weather.
1. The sun is by far the largest object in the solar system

NASA

The sun contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System (Jupiter contains most of the rest).

Equatorial Radius: 695,500 km Equatorial Circumference: 4,379,000 km

Volume: 1,142,200,000,000,000,000 km3 Mass: 1,989,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 kg Density: 1.409 g/cm3 Surface Area: 6,087,799,000,000 km2 Ads Solar PanelsSearch Thousands of Catalogs for Solar Panelswww.globalspec.com Heavy Metals - Water TestTest for Lead & Other Metals Fast Field testing in under 30 secondswww.andalyze.com Solar System InfoFind here the latest information about Solar Systems & Solar Energy!www.solarserver.com 2. Our Sun is actually the closest star to Earth

NASA

Our Sun is an average star, meaning its size, age, and temperature fall in about the middle of the ranges of these properties for all stars. While some in our galaxy are nearly as old as the universe, about 15 billion years, our sun is a 2nd-generation star, only 4.6 billion years old. Some of its material came from former stars.

Spectral Type: G2 V Synodic Period: 27.2753 days Velocity Relative to Near Stars: 19.7 km/s Solar Constant (Total Solar Irradiance): 1.365 - 1.369 kW/m2 3. We've always known the sun

NASA/ESA

Unlike many other objects in our solar system, the sun has been known to humans since the dawn of time. There is no discovery date or discoverer. 4. Since its creation, the sun has used up about half of the hydrogen in its core

SOHO/Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) consortium

Over the next 5 billion years or so, it will grow steadily brighter as more helium accumulates in its core. As the supply of hydrogen dwindles, the Sun's core must keep producing enough pressure to keep the Sun from collapsing in on itself. The only way it can do this is to increase its temperature. Eventually it will run out of hydrogen fuel. At that point, it will go through a radical change which will most likely result in the complete destruction of the planet Earth.

5. The Greeks named the sun Helios

NASA

However, the Romans used the name Sol, which is still in use today. Because of the important role the sun plays in our lives, it has been studied, perhaps, more than any other object in the universe, outside out own planet Earth. Our Sun has inspired mythology in almost all cultures, including ancient Egyptians, Aztecs, Native Americans, and Chinese. 6. Ulysses was the first spacecraft to study our Sun's poles

NASA

Launched aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery and sent towards Jupiter with powerful booster rockets. After studying Jupiter for 17 days, Ulysses used the giant planet's gravity to hurl it into an orbit out of the Ecliptic Plane, where planets orbit our Sun. The other primary Solar mission is SOHO. The international Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) has been keeping a steady watch on the Sun since April 1996. 7. The sun's strong gravitational pull holds Earth and the other planets in place

NASA

It keeps the planets orbiting inside the solar system:

Equatorial Surface Gravity: 274.0 m/s2 Escape Velocity: 2,223,720 km/h 8. The sun is made up of distinctive areas

NASA

In addition to the energy-producing solar core, the interior has two distinct regions: a radiative zone and a convective zone. From the edge of the core outward, first through the radiative zone and then through the convective zone, the temperature decreases from 8 million to 7,000 K. It takes a few hundred thousand years for photons to escape from the dense core and reach the surface. Ads Carbon Capture ProjectsComplete information source on global CCS projects.www.ico2n.com IIT JEE Self Study CourseSelf Study Course From IIT Alumni For Classes 10, 11, 12 Enroll Freewww.topIITcoaching.com

9. How does the sun's "surface" and "atmosphere" compare to planets?

NASA

The "surface," known as the photosphere, is just the visible 500-km-thick layer from which most of the Sun's radiation and light finally escape, and it is the place where sunspots are found. Above the photosphere lies the chromosphere ("sphere of color") that may be seen briefly during total solar eclipses as a reddish rim, caused by hot hydrogen atoms, around the Sun. Temperature steadily increases with altitude up to 50,000 K, while density drops to 100,000 times less than in the photosphere. 10. One unsolved mystery of the sun involves the corona ("crown")

NASA

Above the chromosphere lies the corona ("crown"), extending outward from the Sun in the form of the "solar wind" to the edge of the solar system. The corona is extremely hot - millions of degrees kelvin. Since it is physically impossible to transfer thermal energy from the cooler surface of the Sun to the much hotter corona, the source of coronal heating has been a scientific mystery for more than 60 years.

Children What Is The Solar System?

The Solar System is made up of all the planets that orbit our Sun. In addition to planets, the Solar System also consists of moons, comets, asteroids, minor planets, and dust and gas. Everything in the Solar System orbits or revolves around the Sun. The Sun contains around 98% of all the material in the Solar System. The larger an object is, the more gravity it has. Because the Sun is so large, its powerful gravity attracts all the other objects in the Solar System towards it. At the same time, these objects, which are moving very rapidly, try to fly away from the Sun, outward into the emptiness of outer space. The result of the planets trying to fly away, at the same time that the Sun is trying to pull them inward is that they become trapped half-way in between. Balanced between flying towards the Sun, and escaping into space, they spend eternity orbiting around their parent star.

How Did The Solar System form?

This is an important question, and one that is difficult for scientists to understand. After all, the creation of our Solar System took place billions of years before there were any people around to witness it. Our own evolution is tied closely to the evolution of the Solar System. Thus, without understanding from where the Solar System came from, it is difficult to comprehend how mankind came to be. Scientists believe that the Solar System evolved from a giant cloud of dust and gas. They believe that this dust and gas began to collapse under the weight of its own gravity. As it did so, the matter contained within this could begin moving in a giant circle, much like the water in a drain moves around the center of the drain in a circle. At the center of this spinning cloud, a small star began to form. This star grew larger and larger as it collected more and more of the dust and gas that collapsed into it. Further away from the center of this mass where the star was forming, there were smaller clumps of dust and gas that were also collapsing. The star in the center eventually ignited forming our Sun, while the smaller clumps became the planets, minor planets, moons, comets, and asteroids.
A Great Storm

Once ignited, the Sun's powerful solar winds began to blow. These winds, which are made up of atomic particles being blown outward from the Sun, slowly pushed the remaining gas and dust out of the Solar System.

With no more gas or dust, the planets, minor planets, moons, comets, and asteroids stopped growing. You may have noticed that the four inner planets are much smaller than the four outer planets. Why is that? Because the inner planets are much closer to the Sun, they are located where the solar winds are stronger. As a result, the dust and gas from the inner Solar System was blown away much more quickly than it was from the outer Solar System. This gave the planets of the inner Solar System less time to grow. Another important difference is that the outer planets are largely made of gas and water, while the inner planets are made up almost entirely of rock and dust. This is also a result of the solar winds. As

the outer planets grew larger, their gravity had time to accumulate massive amounts of gas, water, as well as dust.
The Solar System Has Over 100 Worlds

It is true that there are only eight planets. However, the Solar System is made up of over 100 worlds that are every bit as fascinating. Some of these minor planets, and moons are actually larger than the planet Mercury! Others, such as Io, have active volcanoes. Europa has a liquid water ocean, while Titan has lakes, rivers, and oceans of liquid Methane. You can read more about these amazing worlds by clicking here.
The Asteroid Belt, The Kuiper Belt, And The Oort Cloud

You have probably heard about the Asteroid Belt. This band of asteroids sits between the orbits of the planets Jupiter and Mars. It is made up of thousands of objects too small to be considered planets. Some of them no larger than a grain of dust, while others, like Eros can be more than 100 miles across. A few, like Ida, even have their own moons. Further out, beyond the orbit of the minor planet Pluto, sits another belt known as the Kuiper Belt. Like the Asteroid Belt, the Kuiper Belt is also made up of thousands, possibly even millions of objects too small to be considered planets. A few of these objects, like Pluto, are large enough that their gravity has pulled them into a sphere shape. These objects are made out of mostly frozen gas with small amounts of dust. They are often called dirty snowballs. However, you probably know them by their other name... comets.

Every once in a while one of these comets will be thrown off of its orbit in the Kuiper Belt and hurled towards the inner Solar System where it slowly melts in a fantastic show of tail and light. Beyond the Kuiper Belt sits a vast area known as the Oort Cloud. Here within this jumbled disorganized cloud live millions of additional comets. These comets do not orbit the Sun in a ring or belt. Instead, each one buzzes around in a completely random direction, and at extremely high velocities.
Beyond The Oort Cloud

The Sun's solar winds continue pushing outward until they finally begin to mix into the interstellar medium, becoming lost with the winds from other stars. This creates a sort of bubble called the Heliosphere. Scientists define the boundaries of the Solar System as being the border of the Heliosphere, or at the place where the solar winds from the Sun mix with the winds from other stars. The Heliosphere extends out from the Sun to a distance of about 15 billion miles, which is more than 160 times further from the Sun than is the Earth.

Solar System Facts Each page is full of fun and exciting facts about our Solar System. Take your time, and enjoy exploring our solar family.

The Sun is a star found at the center of the Solar System. It makes up around 99.86% of the Solar Systems mass. At around 1,392,000 kilometres (865,000 miles) wide, the Suns diameter is about 110 times wider than Earths. Around 74% of the Suns mass is made up of hydrogen. Helium makes up around 24% while heavier elements such as oxygen, carbon, iron and neon make up the remaining percentage. Light from the Sun reaches Earth in around 8 minutes. The Suns surface temperature is around 5500 degrees Celsius (9941 degrees Fahrenheit), so pack plenty of sunscreen if you plan on visiting (remembering that the average distance from the Sun to the Earth is around 150 million kilometers). The Suns core is around 13600000 degrees Celsius! The Sun generates huge amounts of energy by combining hydrogen nuclei into helium. This process is called nuclear fusion. Because of the Suns huge influence on Earth, many early cultures saw the Sun as a deity or god. For example, Ancient Egyptians had a sun god called Ra while in Aztec mythology there is a sun god named Tonatiuh. The Sun produces a solar wind which contains charged particles such as electrons and protons. They escape the Suns intense gravity because of their high kinetic energy and the high temperature of the Suns corona (a type of plasma atmosphere that extends into space). Planets with strong magnetic fields such as Earth manage to deflect most of these charged particles as they approach. A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth.

Features: Why Do We Study the Sun? We look at the sun rising every day. Its bright, its big and it warms us up. Our sun happens to be the brightest object in our universe and naturally we are really curious to know more about it. Our sun gives us light, heat and energy. It may seem that energy comes from other sources such as gasoline and electricity but the ultimate source of energy for the Earth is nothing else but the sun. Without the sun life on Earth would not exist. It would be so cold that no living thing would be able to survive and our planet would be completely frozen.

Photo above: Students of Parkland Magnet School in Rockville, MD trace sunspots using sunspotters. Photo credit: NASA/Silvia Stoyanova. + Click here to watch the Sun For Kids video The sun is a normal star. It is much closer to us than any other star, and by studying the sun, we can therefore learn more about other stars. The better we understand other stars, the more we know about the Milky Way. From there we know more about other galaxies and in the end we learn more about the universe. The sun also plays the role of a big anchor, which creates gravity that keeps our planet and the other planets of the solar system in a small space. If it weren't for the sun, our planet would simply fly off loose into the universe.

Photo above: Research SOHO scientist Daniel Mueller from the European Space Agency talks to students of Parkland Magnet School in Rockville, MD. Photo credit: NASA/Silvia Stoyanova. Our sun is very dynamic and it changes constantly. It has the largest eruptions in the solar system. These eruptions can be so large that they can reach our planet and cause serious damage by disrupting satellites and other communication devices. Our TV may not work, our cell phones will be down, a high speed train may run loose and if an astronaut happens to be on the moon at the time when the sun erupts, he or she would be in great danger. NASA uses satellites such as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), to predict these eruptions so that we have a warning of at least 2-3 days to protect our expensive communication devices during a solar eruption. SOHO is just one of the instruments that NASA uses to help scientists understand our sun better along with other satellites and large observatories on Earth. Here is what all of us should know about the sun. YOUR TOP 10 SUN FACTS: 1. The sun is a star. This makes it extremely important for life on Earth. The sun provides us with energy, which brings life on our planet. It defines the seasons, the harvests, and even the sleep

patterns of all living creatures on Earth. 2. The sun is the closest star to our planet. Imagine two cars on the road during the night with their headlights on. One car is closer to you and the other one is far away. Which headlights would seem brighter and bigger? That explains why we see the sun so big and bright. It is simply the nearest star to Earth. 3. Remember! The Earth orbits around the sun. 4. The sun is way bigger than the Earth. In fact its radius is 109 times bigger than the radius of the Earth. For those of you who are curious, the suns Radius is 696,000km and the Earths radius is 6, 376km. 5. DONT TOUCH THE SUN! ITS HOT! The suns average surface temperature is 5700 C. Compare that to the Earths average temperature, which is 20 C. 6. The sun is 150 million km (93 million miles) away from the Earth. 7. How old is the sun? Can you imagine 4.5 billion years? 8. We know that the Earths structure consists of different layers. The sun also has layers but unlike the Earth, the sun is entirely gaseous; there is no solid surface. 9. The sun rotates on its axis approximately once every 26 days. The sun is made of gas, which is why its different parts rotate at different speeds. The fastest rotation is around the equator and the slowest rotation is at the suns polar regions (more than 30 days). 10. The sun changes. No matter when or where we look at the sun, we will always see something interesting. Scientists observe these changes by watching the sunspots. They increase and decrease on a regular cycle of about 10.8 years. Learn About Stars With KidsAstronomy.com

stars:

When you look at the night sky you can see many beautiful stars. If you are out in the country or camping in the mountains or the desert away from the city lights, you may see thousands of them. You may even be able to see part of the Milky Way. In a town or city, you can't see nearly as many stars because the city lights create a glow in the sky masking many of them. There are several different kinds of stars in the sky. Some are very big. A couple of stars have been found that are 100 to 200 times larger than the sun. Some very old stars are smaller than the Earth. Scientists study stars and place them in groups based on how they are alike and how they are different. Click on a star type to learn more about each one.

nteresting Facts About Stars

by FR A S E R C A IN on FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Think you know everything there is to know about stars? Think again! Heres a list of 10 interesting facts about stars; some you might already know, and few that are going to be new. 1. The Sun is the closest star Okay, this one you should know, but its pretty amazing to think that our own Sun, located a mere 150 million km away is average example of all the stars in the Universe. Our own Sun is classified as a G2 yellow dwarf star in the main sequence phase of its life. The Sun has been happily converting hydrogen into helium at its core for 4.5 billion years, and will likely continue doing so for another 7+ billion years. When the Sun runs out of fuel, it will become a red giant, bloating up many times its current size. As it expands, the Sun will consume Mercury, Venus and probably even Earth. Here are 10 facts about the Sun. 2. Stars are made of the same stuff All stars begin from clouds of cold molecular hydrogen that gravitationally collapse. As they cloud collapses, it fragments

into many pieces that will go on to form individual stars. The material collects into a ball that continues to collapse under its own gravity until it can ignite nuclear fusion at its core. This initial gas was formed during the Big Bang, and is always about 74% hydrogen and 25% helium. Over time, stars convert some of their hydrogen into helium. Thats why our Suns ratio is more like 70% hydrogen and 29% helium. But all stars start out with 3/4 hydrogen and 1/4 helium, with other trace elements. 3. Stars are in perfect balance You might not realize but stars are in constant conflict with themselves. The collective gravity of all the mass of a star is pulling it inward. If there was nothing to stop it, the star would just continue collapsing for millions of years until it became its smallest possible size; maybe as a neutron star. But there is a pressure pushing back against the gravitational collapse of the star: light. The nuclear fusion at the core of a star generates a tremendous amount of energy. The photons push outward as they make their journey from inside the star to reach the surface; a journey that can take 100,000 years. When stars become more luminous, they expand outward becoming red giants. And when they run out of light pressure, they collapse down into white dwarfs. 4. Most stars are red dwarfs If you could collect all the stars together and put them in piles, the biggest pile, by far, would be the red dwarfs. These are stars with less than 50% the mass of the Sun. Red dwarfs can even be as small as 7.5% the mass of the Sun. Below that point, the star doesnt have the gravitational pressure to raise the temperature inside its core to begin nuclear fusion. Those are called brown dwarfs, or failed stars. Red dwarfs burn with less than 1/10,000th the energy of the Sun, and can sip away

at their fuel for 10 trillion years before running out of hydrogen. 5. Mass = temperature = color The color of stars can range from red to white to blue. Red is the coolest color; thats a star with less than 3,500 Kelvin. Stars like our Sun are yellowish white and average around 6,000 Kelvin. The hottest stars are blue, which corresponds to surface temperatures above 12,000 Kelvin. So the temperature and color of a star are connected. Mass defines the temperature of a star. The more mass you have, the larger the stars core is going to be, and the more nuclear fusion can be done at its core. This means that more energy reaches the surface of the star and increases its temperature. Theres a tricky exception to this: red giants. A typical red giant star can have the mass of our Sun, and would have been a white star all of its life. But as it nears the end of its life it increases in luminosity by a factor of 1000, and so it seems abnormally bright. But a blue giant star is just big, massive and hot. 6. Most stars come in multiples It might look like all the stars are out there, all by themselves, but many come in pairs. These are binary stars, where two stars orbit a common center of gravity. And there are other systems out there with 3, 4 and even more stars. Just think of the beautiful sunrises youd experience waking up on a world with 4 stars around it. 7. The biggest stars would engulf Saturn Speaking of red giants, or in this case, red supergiants, there are some monster stars out there that really make our Sun look small. A familiar red supergiant is the star Betelgeuse in the constellation Orion. It has about 20 times the mass of the

Sun, but its 1,000 times larger. But thats nothing. The largest known star is the monster VY Canis Majoris. This star is thought to be 1,800 times the size of the Sun; it would engulf the orbit of Saturn! 8. The most massive stars are the shortest lived I mentioned above that the low mass red dwarf stars can sip away at their fuel for 10 trillion years before finally running out. Well, the opposite is true for the most massive stars that we know about. These giants can have as much as 150 times the mass of the Sun, and put out a ferocious amount of energy. For example, one of the most massive stars we know of is Eta Carinae, located about 8,000 light-years away. This star is thought to have 150 solar masses, and puts out 4 million times as much energy. While our own Sun has been quietly burning away for billions of years, and will keep going for billions more, Eta Carinae has probably only been around for a few million years. And astronomers are expecting Eta Carinae to detonate as a supernovae any time now. When it does go off, it would become the brightest object in the sky after the Sun the Moon. It would be so bright you could see it during the day, and read from it at night. 9. There are many, many stars Quick, how many stars are there in the Milky Way. You might be surprised to know that there are 200-400 billion stars in our galaxy. Each one is a separate island in space, perhaps with planets, and some may even have life. But then, there could be as many as 500 billion galaxies in the Universe, and each of which could have as many or more stars as the Milky Way. Multiply those two numbers together and youll see that there could be as many as 2 x 1023 stars in the Universe. Thats 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. 10. And theyre very far

With so many stars out there, its amazing to consider the vast distances involved. The closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, located 4.2 light-years away. In other words, it takes light itself more than 4 years to complete the journey from Earth. If you tried to hitch a ride on the fastest spacecraft ever launched from Earth, it would still take you more than 70,000 years to get there from here. Traveling between the stars just isnt feasible right now. If youd like more information on stars, check out Hubblesites News Releases about Stars, and heres the stars and galaxies homepage. We have recorded several episodes of Astronomy Cast about stars. Here are two that you might find helpful: Episode 12: Where Do Baby Stars Come From, and Episode 13: Where Do Stars Go When they Die?