Sun
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| Surface Temperature: | 5780°C |
| Internal Temperature: | 15,000,000°C |
| Distance From Earth: | 152 Million KM (1 AU) |
| Light Travel Time From Earth: | 8.31 mins |
| Mass: | 1.989 x 1033 g |
| Density | 1.408 g/cm³ |
| Radius: | 6.96 x 105 km |
| Luminosity: | 3.827 x 1026 watts |
| Visual brightness (V) | −26.8m |
| Absolute magnitude | 4.8m |
| Galactic period | 2.26×108 years |
| Velocity | 217 km/s |
| Rotation period (equator) | 25.3800 days |
| Solar Neighbourhood |
| For Latest Breaking Astronomy News | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Also visible | on the surface of the Sun, are sunspots, which are Earth size rips in the Sun's surface that are as much as 2000° cooler than the surrounding area, these sunspots and the other eruptions on the Sun, are in a 11 year cycle of activity, but it is not know why. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The energy required by the Sun to consistently give out the light and heat required for life on Earth is produced by a process called `thermonuclear fusion`. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
  
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| Download | a high resolution image of the spectrum of the Sun | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The Hydrogen | nuclei fuse together at tremendously high temperatures, and with each fusion some of the mass of the nuclei is released as energy, and only a tiny amount is needed to produce enormous amounts of energy. This process will continue until all the Hydrogen is used, in approximately 5 billion years, the Sun will then begin the process of turning into a White Dwarf Star, (unfortunately destroying Earth in the process). As well as visible light and heat, the Sun also puts out large amounts of radiation, most of which, thankfully, is stopped by the Earth's Ozone Layer. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| This is a real-time | ultraviolet image of the Sun that measures a mid-temperature region of the Sun in a transition zone between the surface and the corona (the Sun's atmosphere). The bright and dark features are all manifestations of the Sun's magnetic field (the brightest areas show the strongest magnetic fields)
 The Dark filaments are areas cooler than the 1-million-degree corona; when seen protruding from the disk of the Sun, they are called prominences. The fuzzy glow around the disk is ionised gas - relatively cool material that has had electrons stripped from the atoms. The Mottled areas are known as the chromospheric network, where strong magnetic fields congregate. Bright spots in the background of space represent cosmic rays or charged particles that have been accelerated when a coronal mass ejection collides with the ambient, but ever-changing solar wind. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Solar neighbourhood information. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
| A New Theory | Proposes New View of Sun and Earth's Creation: With the recent discovery in meteorites of patterns of isotopes that can only have been caused by the radioactive decay of iron-60, an unstable isotope that has a half life of only a million and a half years. Iron-60 can only be formed in the heart of a massive star and thus the presence of live iron-60 in the young Solar System provides strong evidence that when the Sun formed (4.5 billion years ago) a massive star was nearby "So from this we now know that if you could go back 4.5 billion years and watch the Sun and Solar System forming, you would see the kind of environment that you see today in the Eagle or Trifid nebulas." The amount of radioactive material injected into the young solar system by a supernova might have profoundly influenced the habitability of Earth, and the formation of the solar system... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Measurements by the SWAN instrument onboard SOHO, | have shown that the heliosphere, the solar wind filled bubble, that our solar system is embedded and separates us from the local (ambient) interstellar medium is not axi-symmetrical, but is distorted, very likely under the effect of the local galactic magnetic field.
From the measured distortion it is possible to determine the direction of this field, and future models will hopefully derive its intensity. This is the last missing ingredient required for a precise model of the heliosphere, including its size and shape. These results are in agreement with theoretical models developed to explain the recent data recorded by Voyager 1, suggesting that the spacecraft, which is cruising at a distance of 14 billion km from Earth, is indeed beginning to encounter the solar wind shock at the front of the heliosphere. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Solar minimum | and solar maximum, are two extremes of the sun's 11-year activity cycle. At maximum, the sun is covered with spots, solar flares erupt, and the sun hurls billion-ton clouds of electrified gas toward Earth. It's a good time for sky watchers who enjoy auroras, but not so good for astronauts who have to be wary of radiation storms. Contrary to popular belief, the solar cycle is not precisely 11 years long. Its length, measured from minimum to minimum, varies: The shortest cycles are 9 years, and the longest ones are about 14 years. Researchers aren't sure exactly what makes a cycle long or short . "We won't even know if the current cycle is long or short--until it's over," | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The TRACE spacecraft |
These new waves are different to the lower-pitched waves, at about 3 MHz (5-minute period), that are used to probe the solar interior and even to make images of the far side of the Sun. The solar ultrasound is too high pitched to be directly related to these more well-known "photospheric oscillations." The waves are most likely created by `magnetic reconnection` (the sudden collapse/connection of magnetic fields) or by lower frequency sound waves as they make their way up to the surface of the Sun. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| On April 08, 2005
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a hybrid eclipse of the Sun was visible from within a narrow corridor which traverses the far Southern Hemisphere. The path of the Moon's shadow began southeast of New Zealand and stretched across the Pacific Ocean to Panama, Colombia and Venezuela. A partial eclipse was seen within the much broader path of the Moon's penumbral shadow, which includes New Zealand, much of the South Pacific, South and North America.
The path of this event began as an annular eclipse but it changed to `total` about 2200 km south of Tahiti. At maximum eclipse, the duration of totality lasted 45 seconds. Unfortunately, the total portion of the track never crossed land. The path became annular again about 800 km west of Costa Rica. By the time the shadow reached the coast of Costa Rica, the annular phase wasl already 12 seconds old. After crossing Panama and Colombia, the central path ended in Venezuela where a 33 second annular eclipse occured at sunset. for live eclipse webcam | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| for (sometimes) daily updates
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| A mysterious |
17th century solar dip is linked to Europe's Little Ice Age and to global climate change. From 1645 until 1714, early astronomers reported almost no sunspot activity. The number of sunspots - cooler areas on the sun that appear dark against the brighter surroundings - dropped a thousandfold, according to some estimates. Though activity on the sun ebbs and flows today in an 11-year cycle, it has not been that quiet since.
"Star surveys typically find that 10 to 15 percent of all sun-like stars are in an inactive state like the Maunder minimum, which would indicate that the sun spends about 10 percent of its time in this state." | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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