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Observing The Sun
By : Nicollette Pecipajkovski 7F
About Our Sun
The sun is the centre of the solar system. The
sun is actually a star, just like the millions of
stars in our universe. It is a huge bright,
glowing ball with a diameter of 1,392,000
kilometers, and it is the nearest star to Earth.
What our sun is made up of
The sun is not solid or liquid, of but is it is made up of gases. It is
made up of about 75% hydrogen, 25% helium and 1% of other
elements such as, iron, carbon, lead and uranium. To produce
energy, hydrogen atoms in the suns core, crash into one another
and create helium atoms.
The sun has three layers. The centre of the sun is called the core,
and this is the hottest part of the sun reaching temperatures of
15.6 million degrees Celsius (28 million degrees Fahrenheit). The
middle layer of the sun is called the radiative zone. In this layer,
heat radiation caries energy very quickly from the core of the sun
towards the surface. The outer layer of the sun is called the
convection layer. Here, the energy from the sun moves more
slowly and hot bubbles of gas move around taking heat from the
middle of the sun towards the edge of the sun.
What we see as the visible surface of the sun is called the
photosphere. The photosphere is the innermost layer of the suns
atmosphere . Covering the photosphere is the chromosphere. This
is around 2500 kilometers (1150 miles) thick.
These are the layers of the sun…
Looking at the Sun
If you just look at the sun with the naked eye, it looks
smooth, round and all the same colour. However if you
look at it closely through a telescope it looks grainy (like
it’s made out of millions of bubbles), it varies in colour
and you can see black spots on it. These black spots are
called sunspots. They are different shapes and sizes and
they look darker because they are cooler than the
material that is around them. The sunspots are caused
by change in the suns magnetic field.
The sun and other planets behave as they have a
magnet inside them, which affects the space around it. It
has a force that pulls metals such as iron but doesn’t pull
at metals like aluminum. The further you are from the
magnet the weaker the pull.
< Sunspots on the Sun.
The Sun in our Solar System. >
< The Sun as we see it.
The affect the sun has on Earth
Without the sun, the Earth would be dark, cold and
no forms of life would exist. The sun gives out huge
amounts of light and heat energy. On Earth we are
lucky to have enough light and heat to allow us to
grow plants or crops, harvest them and turn them
into food.
Plants could not grow without heat and light, and if
there were no plants, both animal and human life
could not be sustained. It would affect the entire
food chain, for example, animals need plants to
survive (for food and shelter), people get a large
amount of their food source from both plants and
animals and none of this would be possible if light
and heat wasn’t obtained from the sun.
Without heat or
light trees could not
grow.
Without plants and
animals we could not
have these foods and
without these foods we
could not survive. None of
this would be possible if
we didn’t get light and
heat from the sun.
YOHKOH
Yohkoh (“Sunbeam”), is a solar observatory satellite.
It was designed with lots of special telescope and
other scientific equipment to be sent into space to get
information on the energetic phenomena taking
place on the sun, specifically to gain more
information on solar flares in x-ray and gamma-ray
emissions. Yohkoh has four instruments that could
detect energy emissions from the sun.
- The Brag Crystal Spectrometer (BCS)
- The Wide Band Spectrometer (WBS)
- The Soft X-Ray Telescope (SXT)
- The Hard X- Ray Telescope (HXT)
YOHKOH
On August 31st 1991, Yohkoh was launched into
space from Kagoshimi Space Center in Southern
Japan and was controlled there. Yohkoh sent
information back to the base and other control
centers, so they could gain more knowledge and
understanding about the sun.
SOHO
Soho, the solar and heliospheric observatory is a project that was
developed between ESA and NASA and was an International
collaboration. Soho was specifically designed to carry twelve
scientific instruments on board the spacecraft to record data. The
instruments were provided by European and American scientists.
Soho is made up of two parts. The lower part provides the power
and holds control panels, and the top party holds all the scientific
instruments. The main objective of Soho was to study the sun
from its deep core to the outer corona and the solar wind.
Soho was launched on December 2nd, 1995 and moves around the
sun in step with the Earth. This means that Soho has an
uninterrupted view of the sun at all times and is better able to
provide an accurate and continuous account of the events that
occur around the sun.
The success of satellites has given scientists, and their world,
great knowledge and understanding of our solar system and will
continue to do so in the future.
Fun Sun Facts
• Sunlight takes 8 minutes 20 seconds to reach
us.
• The sun is 400 times farther away from us
than the moon.
• The sun is thought to be the same age as
Earth. (4.6 billion years old).
• The temperature at the surface of the sun is
about 5,500 degrees Celsius but the core is
about 15 million degrees Celsius.
Bibliography
• The sun and other stars – World Books
• Will the sun ever burn out? (Earth, Sun, and Moon) –
Rosalind Mist
• Astronomy – Christopher De Pree, Ph.D., and Alan
Axelrod, Ph.D.
• The night sky – Steve Massey
• Planets – David A. Aguilar
• Solar System Observer’s Guide – Peter Grego
By :
Nicollette
Pecipajkovski
7F 2013