The Sun

The sun lies at the heart of the solar system, where it is by far the largest object. It holds 99.8 percent of the solar system's mass and is roughly 109 times the diameter of the Earth about one million Earths could fit inside the sun. The visible part of the sun is roughly 10,000 degrees F (5,500 degrees C), while temperatures in the core reach more than 27 million degrees F (15 million degrees C), driven by nuclear reactions. One would need to explode 100 billion tons of dynamite every second to match the energy produced by the Sun. The sun is one of more than 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. It orbits some 25,000 light years from the galactic core, completing a revolution once every 250 million years or so. The sun is relatively young, part of a generation of stars known as Population I, which are relatively rich in elements heavier than helium. An older generation of stars is called Population II, and an earlier generation of Population III may have existed, although no members of this generation are known yet.

Formation & Evolution The sun was born roughly 4.6 billion years ago. Many scientists think the sun and the rest of the solar system formed from a giant, rotating cloud of gas and dust known as the solar nebula. As the nebula collapsed because of its gravity, it spun faster and flattened into a disk. Most of the material was pulled toward the center to form the sun. The sun has enough nuclear fuel to stay much as it is now for another 5 billion years. After that, it will swell to become a red giant. Eventually, it will shed its outer layers, and the remaining core will collapse to become a white dwarf. Slowly, this will fade, to enter its final phase as a dim, cool object sometimes known as a black dwarf.

Characteristics

Internal structure and atmosphere

The sun and its atmosphere are divided into several zones and layers. The solar interior, from the inside out, is made up of the core, radiative zone and the convective zone. The solar atmosphere above that consists of the photosphere, chromosphere, a transition region and the corona. Beyond that is the solar wind, an outflow of gas from the corona.

The core extends from the sun's center to about a quarter of the way to its surface. Although it only makes up roughly 2 percent of the sun's volume, it is almost 15 times the density of lead and holds nearly half of the sun's mass. Next is the radiative zone, which extends from the core to 70 percent of the way to the sun's surface, making up 32 percent of the sun's volume and 48 percent of its mass. Light from the core gets scattered in this zone, so that a single photon often may take a million years to pass through. The convection zone reaches up to the sun's surface, and makes up 66 percent of the sun's volume but only a little more than 2 percent of its mass. Roiling "convection cells" of gas dominate this zone. Two main kinds of solar convection cells exist granulation cells about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) wide and supergranulation cells about 20,000 miles (30,000 kilometers) in diameter. The photosphere is the lowest layer of the sun's atmosphere, and emits the light we see. It is about 300 miles (500 kilometers) thick, although most of the light comes from its lowest third. Temperatures there range from 11,000 degrees F (6,125 degrees C) at bottom to 7,460 degrees F (4,125 degrees C) at top. Next up is the chromosphere, which is hotter at up to 35,500 degrees F (19,725 degrees C) and is apparently made up entirely of spiky structures known as spicules typically some 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) across and up to 6,000 miles (10,000 kilometers) high. After that is the transition region a few hundred to a few thousand miles or kilometers thick, which is heated by the corona above it and sheds most of its light as ultraviolet rays. At the top is the super-hot corona, which is made of structures such as loops and streams of ionized gas. The corona generally ranges from 900,000 degrees F (500,000 degrees C) to 10.8 million degrees F (6 million degrees C) and can even reach tens of millions of degrees when a solar flare occurs. Matter from the corona is blown off as the solar wind.

Magnetic Field

The strength of the sun's magnetic field is typically only about twice as strong as Earth's field. However, it becomes highly concentrated in small areas, reaching up to 3,000 times stronger than usual. These kinks and twists in the magnetic field develop because the sun spins more rapidly at the equator than at the higher latitudes and because the inner parts of the sun rotate more quickly than the surface. These distortions create features ranging from sunspots to spectacular eruptions known as flares and coronal mass ejections. Flares are the most violent eruptions in the solar system, while coronal mass ejections are less violent but involve extraordinary amounts of matter a single ejection can spout roughly 20 billion tons (18 billion metric tons) of matter into space.

Chemical Composition Just like most other stars, the sun is made up mostly of hydrogen, followed by helium. Nearly all the remaining matter consists of seven other elements oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, magnesium, iron and

silicon. For every 1 million atoms of hydrogen in the sun, there are 98,000 of helium, 850 of oxygen, 360 of carbon, 1

What is the Sun?

Sun Facts Never look directly at the Sun

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If you looked at the Sun in a telescope, you could blind yourself. The surface of the Sun is 150,000,000 km (93 million miles) away Sun light takes 8 minutes to reach us. Every second, the Sun turns over 4 million metric tons of gas into energy. The Sun is as wide as 109 Earths. The Sun is gas. You would fall in. The Sun is hot (5,500 C or 9,900 F). You would burn up.

The Sun is a star -- the closest one to Earth. It is a large ball of very hot gas. The air we breathe and the helium in a balloon are both gases. The Sun is very hot. It is over 5,000 F at the surface, and much hotter at the center. The Sun is made of mostly hydrogen (70%) and helium (28%). It turns more hydrogen into helium every second. The Sun makes light and heat that warms the surface of the Earth and makes plants grow. We can get food from plants, and we can burn wood and other parts of plants to cook, warm our houses, and make cars go. Without the Sun there would be no life on Earth. How big is the Sun? The Sun is very big - much, MUCH bigger than the Earth! It is more than a million kilometers or 109 Earths across and contains more than 99.9% of the Solar System's mass. If you could stand on the surface of the Sun, you would weigh 28 times as much as you do on Earth because the Sun is so big. More than a million Earths could fit beneath the surface of the Sun! It doesn't look that big from Earth, though. That's because the Sun is so far away. Compared to other stars, the Sun is about average-sized.

The entire Solar System is inside the atmosphere of the Sun. A very thin solar wind of gases blows from the Sun all the way to the edge of the Solar System, until it hits the wind between the stars. What is the surface like? The part we see when we look at the Sun is called the photosphere. It means a ball of light. We call it the surface of the Sun. But it is just very hot gas (about 5500 C). This gas is less dense than the gases below it and glows from the light and heat passing through it. How does the Sun make light and heat? The Sun is the main source of energy for the Earth. This energy is made deep inside the Sun in a process called nuclear fusion. Four hydrogen atoms are fused together to make one helium atom. Some of the leftover matter turns into energy. This is the same way energy is released in a hydrogen bomb.

Core: The center of the Sun is very dense. It's about 12 times as dense as lead. It's also very hot - about 15,000,000 C. This region is where most of the nuclear reactions are taking place. Radiation zone: In this zone the light, heat, and X-rays produced in the core fight their way out towards the surface. The gases that make up the zone are very dense and keep absorbing and emitting the rays. Have you ever tried to run through water? That's what it's like for light waves in this region of the Sun. It can take a single ray of light a million years to get out of this zone. Convection zone: Have you ever seen the air shimmer above a fire? Perhaps you've been told it's because "heat rises"? It is the hot air that is rising. Hot gases get lighter and rise. Cold gases get heavier and sink. In this zone, the gases are less dense. They behave like air on Earth. Gas at the bottom of the zone gets heated up from below. It rises up, cools off a little, and sinks again. Sometimes some rising gas and falling gas bump into each other, but most of the time they form currents like those in Earths oceans and atmosphere. The currents are called convection cells. What are sunspots?

The dark areas are sunspots Sunspots look like dark spots on the Sun. But they are still bright brighter than lightning. They are a little cooler, too. But they are still hot about 2000 C (3600 F). Spots are caused by changes in the Suns magnetic field, and usually form in groups which are carried around the Sun as it rotates. The number of sunspots we see goes up and down every 11 years. Sometimes, prominences and solar flaresform in or near sunspots. What is the solar atmosphere like? Above the photosphere, the Suns gases are not very dense at all. There are two layers that we can see with special telescopes. Above that, gases stream out as solar wind that reaches to the edge of the Solar System.

A closeup view of a sunspot and prominences Prominences and solar flares If you have a telescope with special filters, you can see bumps around the edge of the Sun. Each one of these is called a prominence. They look like volcanoes erupting. They are hundreds or thousands of kilometers long. Some are bigger than the Earth. They often seem to come from sunspots. Sometimes they get so far away from the Sun that they fly away from it. Then they are called solar flares. Chromosphere

Chromosphere means "color ball". It is just above the photosphere. It is not as bright as the photosphere, and you cant normally see it. But you can see it just before a solar eclipse (only with special filters!). It looks like a flash of all the colors of light. Corona

Solar Corona during an eclipse Corona means crown. And that is what pictures of the corona look like. It is just above the chromosphere. It is hotter than the photosphere, and it glows. It is made of thin gases, and blows away as solar wind. It shifts and changes, but it is hard to see, even with special telescopes. Solar wind At the top of the corona, some of the gas blows out as solar wind. It blows fast about 60 km per second (more than 100,000 miles per hour). But there isnt very much of it. If you tried to breathe it, you couldnt. The solar wind is strong enough to push dust and gas away from a comet to make a tail. The solar wind can even push big things. In 1960, the satellite Echo I was put into orbit. It was a large balloon. Because it was so large and light, the solar wind pushed it around in its orbit. In the future, some space craft may use the solar wind to travel between planets using solar sails similar to the way sailboats use the Earth's wind in their sails to cross the ocean.

Heliopause: where the solar wind hits the edge of the Solar System Heliopause Heliopause means where the Sun stops. It is where the solar wind hits the wind from other stars. Near here, the solar wind slows down suddenly. In May 2005, the Voyager I spacecraft went through this region and felt a big bump. It is now just inside the heliopause. Because this happens so far from Earth, it is hard to study!

What is solar weather? Did you know the Sun had weather? Earth weather is what is going on in Earths atmosphere. Solar weather is whats going on in the Suns atmosphere. The Suns atmosphere goes to the edge of the Solar System, so solar weather affects us on Earth. Solar weather (also called space weather) includes sunlight, solar wind, X-rays, and radiation. Solar flares shoot a lot of very hot gas out from the Sun. If a flare hits Earth, it is called a solar storm. It could cause electrical blackouts or block radio signals. It could damage satellites in orbit. Radiation from a bad solar storm could kill astronauts if they were not protected. The Earths atmosphere usually protects us from flares.

Northern Lights Solar flares can also cause an aurora. Auroras look like beautiful curtains of shimmering light. They are called Northern Lights if they are near the North Pole. They are called Southern lights if they are near the South Pole. Solar weather affects other planets, too. We have pictures of auroras on every planet except Mercury and Pluto. Just like we can get Earth weather forecasts, we can get Solar weather forecasts. Forecasters study the Sun to figure out when flares will happen. They try to tell when solar storms will hit Earth. They also try to tell when solar storms will go to other parts of the Solar System. This is because space craft are always out there. Some of them can protect themselves if they are sent instructions.