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Abstract
This is a brief look at our Sun, its creation, its structure, function, and some of the internal andsurface characteristics of our star as well as recent developments in solar observations, and a fewof my own personal experiments as they related to the Sun.
Introduction.
Just less than 5 billion yearsago, in a spiraling arm of our Milky Waygalaxy, a cloud of gas, and dust began tocompressing under its own weight. Theparticles within the cloud's core became sodensely packed that they frequently collided,and fused together. The fusion processreleased tremendous amounts of heat, andlight which could then compete with theforce of gravity within the cloud. The twoforces eventually found an equilibriumpoint, and a star was born. This star inquestion is our Sun. All stars in our galaxyand other galaxies come in various sizes andcolors. All stars are relatively unique. Oursun is a medium sized star known as a
yellow dwarf, or a G Class star on the Hertzsprung-Russel Diagram.
Our Sun,located just 149,598,000 km from Earth hasa radius of 696,000 km, a massof
30
1.9891 10
X kg
, and a surfacetemperature of about 5800 Kelvin. Our Sunis composed of (by mass), 74% hydrogen,25% helium, and 1% all other elements.Because hydrogen has very little mass, thecomposition of the Sun by number of atomswould be 92% hydrogen, 7.8% helium, and0.1% all other elements. The cloud fromwhich our Sun formed did not use all of itsgases and dust to make the Sun. Theleftover gases and dust were used to formthe planets of our solar system (HarvardScience Department, 2002).Our Sun has been fusing hydrogen intohelium and providing Earth with radiantenergy for about 4.5 billion years, and weexpected it to continue doing so for another4.5 billion years. Of course one day our Sunwill expend it hydrogen to the point that itcan no longer fight the force of gravity of itsdeveloping iron core. Gravity will thenbegin to compress the Sun under its ownweight; yet again but the fusion process ischanging as the Sun matures. Thecompression causes the new helium particlesinside of the core to collide hard enough thatthey can stick together and fuse. The corethen begins to fuse helium into carbon tocreate enough energy to maintain its balancewith the force of gravity it is quicklygrowing iron core. Creating carbon gives off more energy than did the making of helium.The energy being pumped out of the coreradiates through the outer layers of the sun.The introduction of too much energy intothe
sun’s
envelope heats up the envelopeparticles to the point that the envelopeexpands. The Sun's envelope will expandand engulf all of the inner solar system outto the radius of Mars. In the process the Sunwill drop in temperature; this change intemperature will be marked by a change incolor as the star becomes a red giant. Oursun will continue to live like this for maybeanother billion years before pulsating andexploding into a planetary nebula probablyleaving a white dwarf at the center
.That is the life and death of our Sun in anutshell.
Sun’s S
tructure.
The structure of the Sunis like looking at a fascinating piece of machinery except is has no tangible movingparts. In the below image developed by theSOHO Project Team, we begin with the
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