The sun is the "heart" of the solar system, and planets and satellites revolve around it. Scientists argue that it is enough to just slightly change the mass of the sun or its size, and life on our planet simply would not exist. We have prepared for our readers a selection of very entertaining facts about the only star in the solar system.
1. The sun is really big
99.8% of the mass of the solar system.
In fact, the Sun makes up over 99.8% of the total mass of the Solar System. This is not a mistake - all planets, their satellites and all other small space objects make up less than 0.2% of the mass of the solar system. To be more precise, the mass of the Sun is about two nonillion kilograms (these are two and thirty zeros after). In terms of volume, the Sun is approximately 1.3 million planets equal to the Earth.
In fact, the mass of the Sun is quite often used in astronomy as the standard unit of measurement for large objects. When it comes to stars, nebulae, or even galaxies, astronomers often use comparisons with the Sun to describe their mass.
Promotional video:
2. On a galactic scale, the Sun is not particularly large
Representations of the ancient solar system.
Although we have just talked about the fact that the Sun is really very large, but this is only in comparison with other objects in the solar system. There are much more massive things in the universe. The Sun is classified as a G-type star, commonly referred to as a yellow dwarf.
As the name suggests, there are much larger stars classified as giants, supergiants, and hypergiants. The red supergiant Uy Shield is 9,500 light years from Earth. It is currently the largest known star, with a diameter of approximately 1,700 times that of the Sun. Its circumference is 7.5 billion kilometers. Even light takes almost seven hours to circle a star. If Uy of the Shield were in the Solar System, then the surface of the star would go beyond the orbit of Jupiter.
3. What happens when the sun dies
Copernicus' heliocentric system.
Stars can live very long, billions of years, but eventually they die too. The further fate of the stars depends on their size. The remnants of smaller stars turn into so-called brown dwarfs. Massive stars die more violently - they turn into supernovae or even hypernovae and collapse into a neutron star or black hole. On rare occasions, these giants can even explode, followed by a gamma ray burst.
The sun is somewhere in the middle - it will not explode, but it will not be "blown away" either. After the sun runs out of hydrogen fuel, it begins to collapse into itself under its own weight, resulting in a denser and hotter core. This will lead to the expansion of the Sun, which will become a red giant. Eventually, it will collapse into a white dwarf - a tiny stellar remnant of incredible density (the size of the Earth, but about the mass of the Sun).
4. What is the Sun made of
Hydrogen and helium.
It is mainly composed of hydrogen and helium, like most stars. To be more precise, this is about 71% hydrogen, 27% helium, and the remaining 2% are traces of tens of chemical elements, mainly oxygen and carbon.
5. How hot is the Sun
Crown of the Sun during an eclipse.
The temperature of the Sun really depends on which part of the Sun we are talking about. The core of the Sun is insanely hot - the temperature there reaches 15 million degrees Celsius. In the chromosphere, the temperature is "only" a few thousand degrees. However, temperatures rise rapidly to millions of degrees in the sun's outer layer, the corona. Why this is so - scientists do not know for sure.
6. How old is the Sun
The theory of the movement of space debris.
The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old. Its age was calculated based on the age of other things in the solar system that can be dated more accurately, such as meteorites or even rocks of the Earth. Naturally, this is true under the assumption that the solar system was formed as a whole; a G-type star has a lifespan of 9 to 10 billion years.
7. How bright is the sun
Sirius is a binary star system.
Sirius A is gigantic, and the bright star Sirius B (right) is much smaller. The Sun is obviously the brightest in the daytime sky, as it is much closer to Earth than any other star. In the night sky, the brightest star is Sirius. The second brightest is Canopus.
Apparent magnitude is a term used to refer to the brightness of a celestial object from Earth. The sun has an apparent magnitude of -27.
8. How fast the sun rotates
The sun and the red giant.
The Sun's rotation is a little tricky to calculate as it varies from region to region. In short, without explanation, the Sun makes a complete revolution in about 25.4 days. The Sun does not actually rotate as a rigid body like the Earth. It rotates fastest at the equator (24.5 days) and slowest near the poles (38 days).
As for the speed of the Sun in the Universe, the entire solar system orbits the center of the Milky Way at a speed of 828,000 km / h. One complete revolution, known as a galactic year, takes approximately 225 to 250 million Earth years.
9. What are sunspots?
Sunspots.
Sometimes, dark spots known as sunspots can be observed on the surface of the Sun. They have a lower temperature (about 1226 degrees Celsius) than the rest of the sun's surface and appear due to fluctuations in the sun's magnetic field. Some of them may be large enough to be seen with the naked eye. Sometimes groups of more than 100 sunspots appear simultaneously. However, this is extremely rare.
10. The sun changes its magnetic field
Distance from the Sun.
Every 11 years, the South and North magnetic poles change places. This also happens on Earth, but much less often. The last time this happened was about 800,000 years ago.