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The Sun Telescopes with Mirrors Queen’s University Telescope Gemini 8m Telescope Keck 10m Telescope Hubble Space Telescope What’s the most famous telescope in the world??? HST – Saturn HST – Eagle Nebula HST – Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) Liquid Mirror Telescope 30m Telescope! Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL)– 100m Mirror! The Sun The Sun is a star– the nearest star! How Big is the Sun? -1.4 million km across → you could put 100 Earths across Sun → 1 million Earths inside the Sun! - Sun weighs ~330,000x Earth Inside the Sun 15 million degrees! The Sun is a (big) ball of hot gas! – Mostly Hydrogen and Helium 6000 degrees Where all the Sun’s energy comes from How the Sun Makes Energy • Like a big nuclear bomb • 2 Hydrogen atoms join to make 1 Helium atom– light and heat are produced! Studying the Sun from the Earth Picture of the Sun from Earth Things on the Sun … and from Space Ulysses SOHO SOHO Picture Sun-Earth Viewer http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/sunearthday/media_viewer/flash.html Northern Lights Northern Lights Northern Lights on Saturn! Solar Eclipses Annular Eclipse Oct 3 Rainbows Rainbows Explained Forming a Rainbow Splitting Light into Colours Sundogs Colours and Temperatures of Stars Colour: hot stars are blue (20,000—35,000 deg) cool stars are red (~3000 deg) Sizes of Stars Stars come in all sizes: • Small: dwarf stars, 1/10th size of Sun • Large: giant and supergiant stars, up to ~1000x size of Sun Comparing the Sun to other Stars Stars come in all sizes: Small: dwarf stars, 10 times smaller than Sun Large: giant and supergiant stars, up to ~100 times bigger than Sun The Sun • How old is the Sun? ~5 billion years old, halfway through its life • Sun balances gravity against pressure from hot gas • How do we know about the Sun?