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The Sun Essay

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The Sun

The sun is the largest object in the solar system. It is a middle-sized star and there are many other stars out in the universe just like it. Even though it is only a middle-sized star it is large enough to hold over 1 million Earth’s inside if it were hollow. The temperature on the sun is far too much for any living thing to bear. On the surface it is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and the core is a stunning 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But don’t worry we are over 90,000 million miles away, the sun could never reach us, at least not yet. The sun is a still a middle aged star and later in its life it will become a Red Giant. In this stage it will get bigger, and closer to us causing a temperature increase and most likely the …show more content…

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. Have you ever heard of a solar flare? A solar flare exists after a sunspot has existed for a long time and the magnetic lines of force usually become jumbled. As a result of this jumbling, magnetic energy is stored in the Corona (region of atmosphere above the chromosphere). The energy may be released in a spectacular discharge, which is a solar flare. A solar flare can be as wide as 367,000 miles and as high 500,000 miles out into space. A solar flare is nothing more than helium erupting from the sun like a volcano. Sunspots, where most solar flares occur, are dark patches on the surface of the sun. This is where the gas of the sun is not so hot and causes it to take on a different color. A typical sunspot is about 22,000 miles in diameter and the number visible sunspots from satellites are about 5 to 100, it varies. How does the sun move? It moves just like earth does, it spins on axis like a top. As earth moves around the Milky Way galaxy, the sun revolves around the center of it. It takes one day for the Earth to spin all the way around on the

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