The Sun As A Medium Sized Star Measuring The Earth

“The sun is the heart of our solar system” (NASA Solar System Exploration) which is located at the center of the solar system. The sun has a radius of 432,168.6 miles. You would need 1.3 million Earths to fill up the sun. But the sun is not the largest star there are several that are much larger. The sun is the closest star to Earth which is around 93 million miles. The sun is like a big ball of gas. “In terms of the number of atoms, it is made of 91.0% hydrogen and 8.9% helium.” (NASA Solar System Exploration). But if you measure by mass the sun is made up of “70.6% hydrogen and 27.4% helium.” (NASA Solar System Exploration). Gravitational attraction which is made by pressure and temperature in the core holds together the sun. There is three main layers in the sun which are the core, the radiative zone, and the convective zone. Inside the core temperatures can reach 27 million degrees Fahrenheit

The churning motion of the material in the convective core causes the nuclear ash of helium to be mixed with the surrounding hydrogen fuel. This motion ensures that virtually all the hydrogen will be available to the nuclear fires that heat the star.

The sun is a big, hot ball of hydrogen gas which enables us to feel the sun’s heat and see its brightness. Every second of every day, the sun transforms over 700 million tons of hydrogen into over 600 million tons of helium. The sun produces so much energy that we can see the sun’s brightness and feel its heat. Hydrogen fusion takes place in the Sun’s core and the gas is heated by the energy that is discharged above the core. Ultimately the gas becomes less dense and the heat from below turns the gas

1. The earth’s sun is a star, it generates heat and light through nuclear fusion.

The life cycle of the Sun starts like all stars with a cloud of dust and gas made up of mostly hydrogen. If the cloud cools, it will shrink because of the gravitational pull between the particles

The greatest energy that can be produced by the sun is electricity. Photovoltaics, or solar cells, capture the sun and convert it into electricity. Solar cells were discovered by the Europeans back in the 1870’s when they used selenium to develop the telegraph. They found that when light hits selenium it would produce and electrical current. Soon enough there were many scientists and engineers working on photovoltaic systems. Silicon and Selenium proved to be the two best elements to conduct electricity when light hits them. Photovoltaic systems (PV cell) work by converting the suns light into electricity. A semi conducting material absorbs the sunlight, that energy knocks electrons loose from their atoms, this allows the electrons to flow through the material to produce electricity. The further development of solar cells can be attributed to the satellite industry. Solar cells were expensive and there was no use for them until satellites came. Because it is impractical to tether satellites it became important to develop solar energy at any cost that would power these satellites. This created a sustainable market for solar power, the first of its kind.

13) When we say a star “moves” on a H-R diagram we are not saying that it is physically moving from one place to another, we are saying that it is transitioning from one stage of its evolutionary life to another. For example we might say it is moving from pre-main sequence to main sequence. This means that the star has moves from an early stage in its life to the middle stage of its life. It has physically stayed in the same place in space.

It is no secret that the earth’s sun is “special” to say the least. Some would say it was designed to be unique to help sustain life on planet earth. However, other nearby stars were not designed to sustain life. One example would be the star Proxima Centauri. This star recently had a short increase in radiation, known as a flare. This flare caused the star to become a thousand times brighter for ten seconds. Earth’s sun also has flares, but they are much smaller. When Proxima Centauri is at its brightest point it is still ten times brighter than our suns largest flare. This is just one example of how special our sun really is.

Stars like our Sun, which are no more than 1.44 solar masses, will undergo fusion of hydrogen into helium. Over its life time the star slowly uses its supply of hydrogen by fusing it into helium. These reactions require high temperatures. Eventually the star will completely fuse hydrogen into helium in its core leaving inadequate amounts of thermal pressure to balance gravity. This will cause the centre of the star to contract to compensate for the heat energy lost.

The sun is usually a hot ball, a yellow dwarf star that glows gasses at the central part of the solar system.

Sunspots are dark spots on the Sun caused its magnetic field. The spots are dark because they are cooler than the area of the Sun that surrounds them and are often as big as the Earth.

The sun is a very powerful star and their love is one of the most powerful and true

a) The Milky Way is an island of hundreds of billions of stars, gas, and dust held together by gravity to form a disk

Indecent bodies like the sun. Stars are made up of big exploding balls of gas, mostly hydrogen and helium. The sun is similarly a star made up of huge amounts of hydrogen, undergoing a continuous nuclear reaction like a hydrogen bomb. Stars come about when vast clouds of hydrogen, helium and dust contract and collapse due to gravity. The clouds came from astronomical plasma from “The Big Bang”, but the dust comes from the supernovae of other stars.

The heat and light of the sun come from the nuclear reactions of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, and helium. So the sun is just one great big atom smashing, gas creating, nuclear furnace that gives off much appreciated energy. But this is not all that happens on the sun’s surface, some exciting stuff does happen up there every once in a while.