Download Some Facts about Our Sun Quick Hits – 1. The Sun is a

Some Facts about Our Sun
Quick Hits –
1. The Sun is a star that is in the center of the Solar System
2. The Sun is recognized as having the largest mass in our Solar System.
3. The diameter of the Sun is 1.4 million km (870,000 miles)
4. The Sun’s distance from the Earth is 150 million km (93 million miles)
5. Earth orbits the Sun 365 days, yes, one year.
6. The Sun rotates every 25-36 earth days.
7. The Sun’s energy travels outwards.
8. The Sun’s core is composed of hot & dense gasses. It has a temperature of 15 million Kelvin
(27 million °F)
9. The Sun is made up of 92% hydrogen, 7% helium and the remainder of various gasses.
10. The atmosphere of the Sun is composed of three areas: the photosphere, chromosphere, and
solar corona.
11. Corona is the Sun’s outer atmosphere with temperatures that range from a few thousand
kelvins to a few million kelvins.
12. Helmet streamers are big white regions that extend out from the Sun in which solar plasma
are trapped by the magnetic field of the Sun.
13. Solar flares from the Sun are sudden bursts of brightness that happen in places near the
sunspots.
14. Sunspots appear on the surface of the Sun and look dark because of the lower temperatures
near it.
15. The internal structure of the Sun is composed of: the inner core, radiative, core, and the
radiative core.
16. The inner core is the hottest part of the Sun, and can reach 27 billion °F.
17. A solar eclipse occurs when Earth passes the shadow of the Moon.
18. A total solar eclipse occurs only during a new moon, which is when the moon sits directly
between the Earth and the Sun.
19. Radiations of the Sun are in two forms, electromagnetic (photons) and particle (electrons,
protons, alpha particles, etc.) radiation.
20. In February 1974, Skylab was the first manned spacecraft to study the Sun.
21. Solar flares occur when magnetic fields of the Sun come together and cause huge explosions
on the Sun’s surface.
22. Solar flares produce bursts of electromagnetic radiation, x-rays, ultraviolet radiation, visible
light, and radio waves.
23. Johann Rudolf Wolf, in 1848 developed a method to count sunspots which has been called
Wolf number.
24. Most ancient civilizations have based their culture on the presence of the Sun. These include
the myths as developed by the following people: Egyptians (Re or Ra), Aztecs (Tonatiuh and
Huitzilopochtli), Greek (Helios), Inca (Inti), and the list goes on.
25. If you weigh 100 lbs, your weight on the Sun would be 2707 lbs. (multiply your actual
weight by 27)
How Big is the Sun?
To put it simply, the Sun is as big as more than 1 million Earth masses put together. It is
1,287,000 times bigger than a solitary Earth. The Sun has a diameter of 1,392,000 km (865,000
miles) while the Earth’s diameter is only 12,742 km (7,918 miles). In terms of weight, the Sun is
333,000 times heavier than the Earth and accounts for 98% of all mass in the solar system.
Following are some other fun and interesting facts about the Sun.
Distance from the Earth – 93,000,000 miles is the
approximate distance from the Sun to the Earth. To cover the distance and reach Earth, sunlight
travels for 8.3 minutes. The Earth comes nearest to the Sun during winter in the northern
hemisphere.
What Kind of Star is the Sun?
Our solar system consists of the Sun, nine planets, their moons, planetoids/asteroids, meteors,
and comets. The members of the solar system or the Sun’s family are the planets which revolve
around the Sun. Planets rotate on their axis and shine through borrowed light from the Sun.
Many have mistaken the Sun for a planet. In reality, the Sun is a kind of a star and is usually the
only star that we can see in the sky during day time. A star is a ball of hot and luminous gas
mostly made up of hydrogen and helium. These gases are held together by gravity. Its gravity
holds the spinning gases and great amounts of energy within the core.
Great amounts of energy produced within the core are released at its surface. Energy is released
as heat and light at the Sun’s surface. The Sun is only one of billions of stars scattered in the sky.
It appears larger and brighter when compared with the other stars. The Sun is an average-sized
star. Compared to other stars, it has medium brightness. But because the Sun is closer to Earth
than the other stars, it appears larger and brighter.
Scientists have found out that a star may change in color. The star’s color is related to its
brightness and brightness also changes when a star changes in color. It has also been found that a
star goes through the stages or what we might call a life cycle.
A young star might start off with bluish-white light. As it gets older, it changes into a yellow
star. Our Sun is a yellow star. Some refer to our Sun as a yellow dwarf, owing to its smallness
relative to other stars. Further cooling changes a yellow star into a red one. By this red phase, the
star would have expanded until it collapses from the inward force of its own gravity.
That means, the Sun being a star, would soon collapse when it gases are used up. But there’s no
need to worry. According to scientists, the Sun has been burning for more than 4 billion years
and will continue to burn at twice this duration.
What is the Sun Made of?
The sun is a big ball of hot gases. The gases are converted into energy in the sun's core. The
energy moves outward through the interior layers, into the sun's atmosphere, and is released into
the solar system as heat and light.
Most of the gas — about 72 percent — is hydrogen.
Nuclear fusion converts hydrogen into other elements.
The sun is also composed of about 26 percent helium and
trace amounts of other elements — oxygen, carbon, neon,
nitrogen, magnesium, iron and silicon.
These elements are created in the sun's core, which makes
up 25 percent of the sun. Gravitational forces create
tremendous pressure and temperatures in the core. The
temperature of the sun in this layer is about 27 million
degrees F (15 million degrees C). Hydrogen atoms are compressed and fuse together, creating
helium and a lot of energy. This process is called nuclear fusion.
The energy, mostly in the form of gamma-ray photons and neutrinos, is carried into the radiative
zone. Photons can bounce around in this zone for about a million years before passing through
the interface layer, or tachocline. Scientists think the sun's magnetic field is generated by a
magnetic dynamo in this layer.
The convection zone is the outermost layer of the sun's interior. It extends from about 125,000
miles (200,000 km) deep up to the visible surface or the sun's atmosphere. Temperatures cool in
this zone, enough for heavier ions — such as carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, calcium and iron — to
hold onto their electrons. This makes the material more opaque and traps heat, causing the
plasma to boil or "convect."
The convective motions carry heat quite rapidly to the surface, which is the bottom layer of the
sun's atmosphere, or photosphere. This is the layer where the energy is released as sunlight. The
light passes through the outer layers of the sun's atmosphere — the chromosphere and the corona
— before reaching Earth eight minutes later.
Abundance of elements
Astronomers who have studied the composition of the sun have catalogued 67 chemical elements
in the sun. There may be more, but in amounts too small for instruments to detect. Here is a table
of the 10 most common elements in the sun:
Element
Hydrogen
Helium
Abundance (pct.
of total number
of atoms)
Abundance
(pct. of total mass)
91.2
71.0
8.7
27.1
Oxygen
0.078
0.97
Carbon
0.043
0.40
Nitrogen
0.0088
0.096
Silicon
0.0045
0.099
Magnesium
0.0038
0.076
Neon
0.0035
0.058
Iron
0.030
0.014
Sulfur
0.015
0.040
How Hot is the Sun?
When asked of the hottest thing that could burn melt and burn all things on earth, a quick
response would be the solar systems very own Sun. The Sun is made up of different gases such
as hydrogen and helium. Different areas of the Sun have varying degrees of hotness. Would you
believe that what is considered as the coldest part of the Sun called the Sun spot has temperatures
of 6,700 degrees Fahrenheit? It is several times hotter than a volcano’s lava. The Sun spot is an
area of the Sun where cool and dark areas of magnetic disturbance erupt.
The surface of the Sun called the photosphere has a temperature of about 10 000 degrees
Fahrenheit while the chromosphere or the layer of the Sun’s atmosphere lying beyond the
photosphere is about 7,800 degrees Fahrenheit. The Sun’s corona or the outermost atmospheric
layer can be as hot as about 180 000 degrees Fahrenheit. The farthest point of the corona from
the Sun has temperatures that can reach to up to 3,600,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The corona is
also that bright halo of light that that is seen during a total solar eclipse. The Sun’s hottest part is
its center where temperatures of about 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit are registered.
The reason why the center of the Sun is its hottest part is a process called fusion. This process is
also the reason why sunlight is seen here on earth. Fusion causes atoms of the gases in the Sun to
collide frequently such that it produces enough energy to ionize the gases. Then the collision of
the ions will result in nuclear reactions at rates sufficient enough to emit energy required to give
the Sun its radiance and luminosity. The reactions in various parts of the Sun involve the burning
of hydrogen to helium.
Fusion in the Sun
How does the fusion in the Sun work? The Sun is very hot. In fact, it is so hot that it provides
enough warmth and light to our planet. How did it become hot in the first place? The Sun is
made up of light gasses, specifically hydrogen. What happens to hydrogen inside its core that
makes it extremely hot? This is where fusion comes in. Knowing the part that fusion plays in the
Sun’s current state right may also bright about light to an immense source of inexhaustible
source of energy. Scientists are studying the mechanism of fusion because it might just be the
answer to the Earth’s increasing need of energy.
The fusion in the Sun starts with hydrogen atoms. Helium is created once two of these hydrogen
atoms combine. The process of the two hydrogen atoms combining or fusing together releases an
incredible amount of energy. Why do these two atoms fuse together? It is a combination of
gravity, density and temperature that makes the fusion possible. This is just a preview of it. In
fact the actual mechanism itself is much more complicated.
Deuterons are formed when 2 pairs of protons fuse. Then this fuses again with another proton
that results to helium-3. If two helium-3 combine or fuse, a beryllium-6 is achieved. This final
result unfortunately is so unstable that it split up into a helium-4 and 2 protons. The process thus
results in 2 neurons, 2 positrons and gamma rays. This complicated yet sophisticated process is
what makes up the mechanism of the fusion in the Sun. It is because of this process that the Sun
is able to provide the warmth and the light that we need in order to survive. This is the same
mechanism that is being studied and developed in order to develop a man-made source of infinite
energy in the future.