The Sun

Ninety-three million miles away lies an enormous sphere of hydrogen and helium. The hydrogen is fusing together and creating massive amounts of heat, energy, light, and some heavier elements, in a process known as nuclear fusion.  This is a very common process.  When looking up at the night sky, all of the other stars are doing the same thing.  Many of those stars are hundreds of times larger than our own Sun.  In fact, our Sun is just an average star.  It's not the hottest or coldest, or the largest or smallest. It's not the oldest or youngest star in the universe either. It's right in the middle.  Even though it is just an average star, you and I would not be here without it.

The Sun is also responsible for the beautiful auroras over Earth and other planets.  I have never seen one in person but have seen many pictures.  It is  one of my goals to travel to a place so I can view an aurora.  The auroras are caused by the particles from the solar wind, which the sun creates, reacting with the atmosphere of the Earth.  The most common color of aurora is yellowish green but blue, purple, and red auroras are also possible.  The different colors depend on the different molecules and how high they are in the atmosphere. The auroras are centered around the northern and southern magnetic poles.  The auroras in the north are referred to as Aurora Borealis and to the south, Aurora Australis.

Dark spots are almost always visible on the surface of the Sun.  They appear dark because their temperature is slightly cooler than the surface of the Sun.  From these sun spots, a large prominence (a large loop shape of gaseous material) can explode off the surface of the Sun.  A prominence can easily fit over 1,000 Earth diameters between them and the surface of the Sun.  I had the chance to view such a prominence in May of 2012 at Brian Head.  A fellow amateur astronomer had brought his telescope that was specifically made for looking at the Sun and its features.  Instead of appearing a natural yellow to orange color, his telescope made the Sun look red.  The view of the prominence was incredible!  The astronomer informed me that this was a new prominence and had not yet been reported by anyone else.  He was pretty excited to show it to me.

The Sun is so massive, that it could hold all the planets in our solar system inside of it with room to spare. From another perspective, over 1 million Earth sized planets could fit inside of the Sun. The gravity from the Sun holds all of the planets, moons, and asteroid belts in orbit.

Different ways to harness the energy of the Sun were discovered in the mid 1700's, but never caught on because of other, more profitable ways for businesses to create energy.  The gas and oil powered machines of today almost did not come into existence.  In the late 1800's inventions in solar power were catching on when a huge reserve of oil was discovered and dropped the prices of oil.  Solar power is free and only needs to be collected to be used.  Can you imagine living in a world that did not use oil based machines. There would not be the waste products of using oil and the air would be so much cleaner! Global warming would not be as pronounced as it is today.  Not to mention all of the wars, politics, and expenses of today.

During the summer when you are looking up at the Sun and cursing it because it is so hot outside, remember, the Sun is your friend!  

Here are a few pictures of the sunset over the last few days.  Enjoy!