The Sun could not harbor life as we know it because of its extreme temperatures and radiation. Helios, the Sun god in ancient Greek mythology, lends his name to many Sun-related terms as well, such as heliosphere and helioseismology.
The Latin word for Sun is “sol,” which is the main adjective for all things Sun-related: solar. Since its launch, the mission has kept watch on the Sun. 2, 2020, marked the 25th anniversary of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, or SOHO. The corona reaches up to 3.5 million ☏ (2 million ☌) – much, much hotter than the photosphere.ĭec. In one of the Sun’s biggest mysteries, the Sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, gets hotter the farther it stretches from the surface. The part of the Sun we call its surface – the photosphere – is a relatively cool 10,000 ☏ (5,500 ☌). The hottest part of the Sun is its core, where temperatures top 27 million ☏ (15 million ☌). By studying our Sun, scientists can better understand the workings of distant stars. And many solar systems have more than one star. Stars up to 100 times larger have been found. Its gravity holds the solar system together, keeping everything from the biggest planets to the smallest bits of debris in orbit around it.Įven though the Sun is the center of our solar system and essential to our survival, it’s only an average star in terms of its size. Its diameter is about 865,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers). The Sun is the largest object in our solar system. The science of studying the Sun and its influence throughout the solar system is called heliophysics.
But the Sun is a dynamic star, constantly changing and sending energy out into space. Without the Sun’s energy, life as we know it could not exist on our home planet.įrom our vantage point on Earth, the Sun may appear like an unchanging source of light and heat in the sky. It’s about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers) from Earth and it’s our solar system’s only star. The Sun is a 4.5 billion-year-old yellow dwarf star – a hot glowing ball of hydrogen and helium – at the center of our solar system.
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