A Series on the Sun

OUR SUN/PHOTO SPACESTATIONINFO.COM

OK m friends I'm sorry it has been exactly a month since I last posted here, so I am going to get myself motivated and start out a series of posts regarding the sun, not sure how many entries there may be in this series I guess all of us will stand by and see.

The sun is a star which is very closer to earth than any other star and appears very large and bright. Without the Sun's light and heat, there would be no life on Earth. The Sun is a ball of plasma with a mass of about 2×1030 kg. The sun is mainly composed of hydrogen and helium; it contains about 70% of hydrogen, 28% of helium and less than 2% of other metals. The outer atmosphere of sun has a temperature of over 106 K when its visible surface (the photosphere) has a temperature of just 6,000 K. Solar energy is transformed by plants into chemical energy, which is the first step in the food chain for all living things. The Sun has been around for about 4.6 billion years and is expected to keep burning bright for another 5 billion years.

COMPOSITION OF OUR SUN

1. HYDROGEN-73.46%                                                                 6.  NEON-12%
2. HELIUM-24.85%                                                                        7.  NITROGEN-0.09%
3. OXYGEN-0.77%                                                                        8.  SILICON -0.07%
4. CARBON-0.29%                                                                        9.  MAGNESIUM-0.05%
5. IRON-0.16%                                                                             10.  SULFUR-0.04%

Something I found that I thought was interesting was that you always hear astronomers talking about the solar "surface," the Sun is actually s hot that it neither liquid or solid matter anywhere inside it. Moving down through the Sun, one continually encounters ever denser and hotter gases.

The Sun only appears to have a surface because most of it's visible light comes from one specific gas layer. This region which is only about 249 miles thick is called the photosphere. The photosphere is the innermost of the three layers comprising the Sun's atmosphere. Because the upper two layers are transparent to most wavelengths of visible light, we see through them down to the down to the photosphere. We cannot, however, see through the shimmering gases of the photosphere, so everything below the photosphere is called the Sun's interior.

Next entry we will continue with The Sun Part II