All+About+The+Sun

All About The Sun!

Introduction The sun was born in a vast cloud of gas and dust around 5 billion years ago. Over a period of many millions of years, this gas and dust began to fall into a common center under the force of its own gravity. At the center, an ever growing body of mass was forming. As matter falls inward, it generates a tremendous amount of heat and pressure. As it grew, the baby Sun became hotter and hotter. Eventually when it reached a temperature of around 1 million degrees, its core ignited, causing it to begin nuclear fusion. When that happened the sun began to produce its own energy, light and heat. You could fit about 1,300,000 earths in the sun. The sun can reach up to about 15 million degrees Celsius.

What is a nuclear fusion? A nuclear fusion is how stars produce their own energy, light and heat. While producing heat, light and energy they 'burn' fuel known as hydrogen. The result is that they create another type of matter known as helium. But stars do not burn the same way a fire does because the star isn't on fire.

Convection

Heat rises as cooler air falls. Have you ever noticed that your basement is always much cooler than upstairs. The same laws of physics apply within stars. Because heat rises, while cooler gases fall, the gas within stars is constantly rising and falling. This creates massive streams of circular motion within the star. This is called convection.

Sun Spots ﻿ During periods of high solar activity, the Sun commonly releases massive amounts of gas and plasma into its atmosphere, they are know as solar flares. Some solar flare can be massive and contain a lot of power. Others are small and don't have any effect on the atmosphere. Occasionally when there are large flares they can cause satellites orbiting the earth to malfunction. They can also interact with the Earth's magnetic field to create impressive and beautiful light shows known as the Northern and Southern lights, or Auroras.

Solar Winds ﻿ As the Sun burns hydrogen at its core, it releases vast amounts of atomic particles, or pieces of atoms into outer space. These atom particles, along with the Sun's radiation create a sort of wind, known as the solar wind.The atoms fly out into space, they are millions of degrees Celsius. They are usually made of magma.

﻿The Sun's Family <span style="color: #e2aa28; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">﻿ <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: normal;">﻿The sun is by far the largest object in our solar system. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">98% of all matter within the Solar System is found within the Sun. This means that all the planets, moons, asteroids, minor planets, comets, gas, and dust would all combine to make up only 2% of all the matter in the Solar System. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; width: 740px;"> <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14px;">Because the Sun is so large compared to everything else, it is easily able to hold on to the rest of the matter, causing everything else to orbit around it. <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; width: 740px;"> <span style="display: block; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: medium; line-height: normal; width: 740px;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">