Today we are going to cover the basics about our sun! The sun is a star, and it's the only star associated with our solar system. It's about 93million miles away from Earth, and about 110x the size of Earth. The sun is a giant ball of gas, and has a temperature of over 5800 degrees! It's corona, or surrounding gaseous "atmosphere", can get up to 2 million degrees! The suns composition is about 3/4 hydrogen, 1/4 helium, and a tiny fraction is elements heavier than helium. Fusion reactions of hydrogen into helium in the suns core release energy, which is why the sun emits light. All stars have fusion in their cores and therefore emit light. Objects such as moons and planets do not emit their own light, they reflect light from a nearby star. The sun is about 5 billion years old, and will survive for another 5 billion years. At this point, the sun will expand, engulfing the inner planets, and then shed its outer layers and create a planetary nebula. (But don't worry, that's many years away!) The image above is what the sun looks like today! (For more fun facts about the sun, see the post entitled Our Friend, the Sun)
Image credit: SOHO/ESA/NASA
