The Sun Solar System
Sun Definition�
The Sun is at the center of our solar system. Indeed, without the Sun, the solar system would not exist. All the planets Solar and their Moons, asteroids, comets, and other bodies in our solar system orbit around the Sun. The Sun is a medium-sized star, which means it creates its own light and heat. It is a closet star to the Earth, which is why it looks so large. All the other stars are much further away. Sun Facts are described below :
What is the Sun made of?
The Sun is a tremendous ball of hot, glowing gases which rotates in space. It is bigger than a million Piles of the earth in volume. The center of the Sun is mainly made of hydrogen gas, with some helium and tiny amounts of other elements. Hydrogen is the Sun�s fuel. Within the Sun Nuclear fusion continuously produces massive amounts of energy in the form of light and heat, while helium gas is released.
Sun Temperature�����������
At the center of the Sun, the temperature is about 15 million �C. The surface temperature is about 5500�C.
How old is the Sun?�������
Scientists believe that the Sun began its life about 5 billion years ago. A great cloud of dust and gas formed in space. This cloud of gas and dust began to form a spinning disc with a huge bulge in the middle. The disc started spinning faster and faster. The huge bulge kept heating up until it began turning hydrogen gas into helium gas. Slowly the great bulge was turning into the Sun. At the same time, the planets, including our Earth, were formed from the rest of the gassy disc. The Sun is about 5 billion years old and, like all living things, it will complete a lifetime and then die.
How big is the Sun?
As we have just seen, the Sun’s fuel is hydrogen gas, which it turns into helium gas, creating huge quantities of heat and light and many other kinds of radiation. Almost half of the Sun’s hydrogen has now been turned into helium. It will take about 5 billion more years for all the hydrogen to be used up. When the last of the hydrogen has been turned into helium, the Sun will start to grow bigger. It will grow up to 100 times its present size and be 1000 times brighter than it is now. Then it will be called a red giant star. The. next stage is that the Sun�s outer layers will start turning into the cloud of gas. The gas will slowly disappear and leave only the Sun�s center. The Sun will start to cool down, although this will take millions of more years. Stars like this called White Dwarf stars. Finally, the Sun will cool down completely and end its life as a cold, dark body called Black dwarf.
Studying the Sun
Our atmosphere makes it very difficult to study the Sun in the Universe. This is because It filters out many of the Sun�s rays. The best way to study the Sun is to send space probes and satellites into space. The American Space probe Ulysses was launched in 1990 and reached the Sun in 1994. It has been sending back information about the Sun�s outer layers and solar winds (particles that pour out of the Sun at high Speed) ever since. Ulysses was only expected to last for five years, but in 2009 it was still sending back information about the Sun. Unfortunately, Ulysses� orbit is taking it further and further away from the Earth, and the information it is sending back is becoming less valuable. The American space probe SOHO (short for Solar and Hemispheric Observatory) has been studying the Sun since 1995, while in February 2010, the American Space Agency NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Laboratory (SDO). This spacecraft will study the inner workings of the Sun and take pictures of the Sun every 0.75 seconds and send them back to Earth.
Sun Facts
Sun Facts are very amazing and interesting. Some of the interesting Sun Facts are described below:
- The diameter of the Sun at the equator is about 1.4 million km.
- Mass of the Sun is 333,000 times mass of the Earth�s.
- Time is taken for sunlight to reach Earth from the Sun is in just 8 minutes.
- The Sun sometimes has dark spots on its surface. These Sunspots are areas where the temperature is lower. Sunspots are not always in the same place on the Sun.
- Scientists have discovered that every eleven years, the Sun has more sunspots than usual. Sometimes a blazing burst of gas comes from the surface of the Sun, shoots up hundreds or even thousands of kilometers into space, and then loops back down. This is a called a Prominence.
- From time to time, there are huge explosions on the Sun and extremely hot gas particles are hurled into space. These solar flares seem to be associated with sunspots. By observing the movement of sunspots, scientists found that different parts of the Sun take different lengths of time to rotate.
- The Sun�s middle, or equator, takes about twenty- five days to rotate completely, whereas its top takes around thirty days.
- The temperature of the Sun is at the surface is 5500�C.
- At the center of the Sun, the temperature is 15 million� C.
- Weight of hydrogen fuel used is about 600 million tons per second of the Sun.
- The average distance of the Sun from the Earth is about 150 million km.
- The Sun is middle-age and it is almost 4.6 billion years old.
- The Sun has even now scorched off about half of its store of Hydrogen.
- It has adequate Hydrogen to burn for 5 billion years approximately.
- The Sun is presently a Star which is known as a Yellow Dwarf.
- The Sun comprised of a very stout magnetic field.
- Magnetic energy which is released by the Sun by the process of magnetic storms become the origin of Solar Flares.
- The Sun is also able to produce cosmological wind.
- The wind is basically a rivulet of charged particles.
Sun Facts for Kids
Sun Cartoon
