The Sun

The Sun is a star sits at the center of Solar System. It is the largest in Solar system. It makes up around 99.86% of the Solar System’s mass. Around 74% of the Sun’s mass is made up of hydrogen and 24% is helium. Other elements in the Sun are carbon, oxygen, neon, and iron. The sun gives energy to life on Earth. Light from the Sun reaches Earth in around 8 minutes.

The Sun looks like a burning ball of fire, but it actually has an internal structure. The visible surface we can see is called the photosphere, and heats up to a temperature of about 6,000 degrees Kelvin. The center of the Sun is called the ‘Core,’ that generates the energy of the Sun. The sun’s core is around 13,600,000 Celsius. The ‘Radiative Zone’ surrounds the core and transports the energy generated by the core. It takes around 170,000 years to transmit the energy of the Sun from its core- to the second layer, the Radiative Zone, then to the third layer which is the ‘Convective Zone.’ The sun is a ball of gas and has no solid surface.

The sun’s gravity anchors earth and all the other planets together in a small space called the solar system. The sun is at the center of the solar system and all planets orbit around it. Its gravity is 28 times stronger than earth’s gravity. It is approximately 391 times as far away from earth as the moon.

The sun is actually a mixture of all colors, which appears to the eye as white. It is as bright as 4 trillion trillion 100-watt light bulbs. It emits three different kinds of energy; infrared radiation, visible light, and ultraviolet light. The Earth receives the sunlight when the radiation of the Sun escapes from the Photosphere. Some parts of the sun are cooler than others and thus appear to be darker. They are called sunspots. Sun spots have a very strong magnet field, which prevents the convection of energy, and thus accounts for their lower temperatures. When its energy (hydrogen) burns out, it will expand into the red giant and consume nearby planets, possibly even earth.

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