These are 11 crazy tidbits about our nearest star, the Sun.
1. In Terms Of Distance, Our Nearest Star Is the Sun
In the center of the sun is a gigantic plasma ball where thermonuclear processes occur. Almost 150,000,000,000,000 kilometers separate us from its location. Our sun is an ordinary G-class star in the middle of its existence. It has a surface temperature of 5780 K.
This causes its light to have a nearly white spectrum. Once its light has traveled through the atmosphere of Earth, it takes on a yellowish hue.
Not everywhere in the universe has the same number of little stars as large ones. This means that the Sun is significantly larger than 90% of the nearby stars. It’s also a standard by which we measure other objects of a similar kind.
2. The Name “Helium” is Derived from the Star Helios
Our star’s spectrum initially revealed the lines of light from a previously unidentified element when scientists attempted to deduce its chemical composition.
It was thought to exist solely there for a time. Thus, it was given the name of the Greek sun deity Helios. While the material eventually turned up on Earth, the name stuck.
Roughly one-quarter of the solar mass is composed of helium. The remaining 27 percent consists of helium and heavier elements. The energy in our light source comes from a thermonuclear reaction that breaks down hydrogen into helium.
3. The Sun Is 500 Times Heavier Than the Combined Mass Of the Planets Orbiting It
The sun accounts for 99.86 percent of the mass of the solar system. This makes its total mass almost 500 times that of all the planets and asteroids. Not even Jupiter, with its enormous size and mass, comes close to matching the mass of our sun.
The Earth, in comparison to the Sun, is around 333,000 times less massive. Our star has enough room inside for 1,300,000,000 Earth-like planets. On the other hand, our star is around 40% denser than water.
4. The Crown of the Sun
Our sun’s outermost layer is called the corona (Latin for “crown”). It has protrusions and other plasma outbursts. These structures typically span greater distances than the Earth and the Moon, measuring hundreds of thousands of kilometers.
The corona of the Sun is highly scorching. The typical temperature is between 2 and 2 million Kelvin. Some parts of it, though, can get as hot as 20 million degrees Kelvin. When our star is wholly eclipsed, we may look into the sky and observe the solar corona.
5. The Sun Is Spotted
The photosphere is the outermost layer of the Sun’s surface and is responsible for the visible light it produces. Some places appear darker and colder than others. We cannot just peer at our star using a telescope; however, enormous clusters of spots become apparent when viewing the star through dark filters.
The magnetic field lines of the Sun become twisted and ripped, creating sunspots. This causes solar flares, which are intense releases of plasma. The Solar Orbiter instrument was deployed to the solar system to investigate these phenomena.
Magnetic storms on Earth have been linked to the solar wind, which has been shown to have origins in the sun.
A continual stream of charged particles, known as the solar wind, is accelerated by the Sun’s magnetic field. Its strength is usually too low to cause harm to people on Earth.
But solar flares can release many charged particles into the atmosphere. Even larger chunks of plasma occasionally rip away from our star. Coronary ejection describes this process.
Such plasma or particles interact with Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere as they reach Earth. When a magnetic storm hits, the Northern Lights can make an appearance. Electrical and radio infrastructure can fail during these storms, and those with preexisting conditions are especially vulnerable.
6. The Sun’s Activity Fluctuates Throughout Time
The explosion of any of the present regions on the sun’s surface is unpredictable. There may be a process at work here that we haven’t figured out yet.
While there is no set pattern to the total number of spots, there is a discernible pattern. The cycles repeat every 11 years and include both peaks and troughs. Since observations of our star began, we have completed 25 cycles.
The next time it’s at its most active is expected to be in 2025. Whether or if the duration of fluctuations varies over time and what causes such periodicity remain mysteries to scientists.
7. Total Solar Eclipses Won’t Occur Indefinitely
When the Moon passes in front of the Sun, totally or partially blocking its light from reaching Earth, we have a solar eclipse. This occurs not once every 29–30 days (the length of a complete moon cycle) but twice or five times every year due to the inclination of our satellite’s orbit concerning the ecliptic plane.
We have a total solar eclipse when the Moon blocks out the Sun. Even rarer are annular and partial eclipses. The latter happens when Earth’s natural satellite gets far out in orbit, and its disk is no longer large enough to cover the Sun completely.
Total solar eclipses will cease to occur roughly 600,000,000 years from now. The Moon’s orbit will take it farther and farther from Earth until it appears permanently more diminutive than the Sun. In such cases, we won’t see any total eclipses, only partials and annular.
8. The Earth Is at Its Farthest Distance from the Sun in the summer
The path Earth takes as it orbits the Sun is elliptical. Simply put, its relative distance from you varies with the seasons. The axis’s tilt relative to the ecliptic, rather than its rotational period, is responsible for the annual cycle of winter and summer. Because of this, when summer arrives in the northern hemisphere, winter arrives in the southern hemisphere, and so on.
At the same time, in the heart of winter in the northern hemisphere, January is when Earth reaches perihelion, the closest point of the orbit to the Sun. Moreover, it reaches its farthest point from Earth, known as aphelion, during the Northern summer. The latter is scheduled on July 4 of this year.
9. Sunlight Isn’t the Only Type of Radiation the Sun
Like other stars, the sun gives off many different types of radiation. Only the range from about 380 nanometers (purple) to about 740 nanometers (red) is visible to the human eye (red). Moving toward longer wavelengths brings you first into the infrared spectrum and then into the radio frequency range.
First comes ultraviolet light, mostly filtered out by the atmosphere but still gives us a nice tan; then comes X-rays; and lastly, gamma radiation, which has the shortest wavelength of the three.
The Sun emits radiation on various frequencies, with varied strengths for each. Some areas of the spectral range that are invisible to the human eye tell us more about our illumination source than the visible spectrum.
For this reason, much of the space and terrestrial equipment that studies our star does so in wavelengths that are not visible to the human eye.
10. Increases in Solar Radiation
Our source of light is gradually becoming more intense in its radiation. At its inception 4.5 billion years ago, it was around 25% less bright than it is now. There has been a steady rise in its luminosity since then.
At this time, our understanding is insufficient to speculate on these shifts’ impact on the greenhouse effect. The Sun might become so bright in a billion years that life on Earth would be impossible. According to other research, this won’t occur for another 3.5 years.
11. A Red Giant Phase of the Sun’s Evolution Occurs In Years
The Sun’s core will begin to run out of hydrogen at around the 10.9 billion-year mark. In a few hundred million years, our sun will expand and become a subgiant, a type of orange star with a radius about 2.3 times that of the sun.
By the time the Sun reaches 12.2 billion years old, a thermonuclear reaction will have begun in its outer layers, and the star will expand even farther. Soon, our star will evolve into a red giant and swallow up the inner planets. The red giant will eventually become a white dwarf once its outer layers are ejected into space and its inner layers contract to that of a neutron star.