The Sun

The sun is the center of solar system. The sun is mostly referred to as a ball of incandescent plasma which was worshiped as god in historic Roman and Greek times. Greek Philosopher Anaxagoras was the first individual to estimate earth’s distance from the sun (Fraser, 2008). Later on, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed that earth and other planets orbited the sun. Scientifically, the sun is a star that is almost spherical in shape and is believed to have formed almost 4.6 billion years ago (Rushworth, 2011). The approximated diameter of the sun 1,392,684 kilometer; compared to earth, the sun is 109 times larger in diameter and has a mass of 2×10³⁰ Kilograms. In the year 1930, astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar advanced theoretical concept of nuclear fusion. He explained that the sun consisted of hydrogen and helium gases. Later discoveries realized that 1.69% of the sun; that is 5,628 times the earth mass, is composed of oxygen, iron, carbon and neon. The total mass of the sun is estimated to be 333,000 times that of the earth. The volume of the sun is also valued to be 1,300,000 times that of the earth (Solar and Space Physics Survey Committee, 2004).

 This gases and dust are compressed by gravity collapse at the center, thus initiating thermonuclear fusion. This powerful radiation makes the sun to have a temperature of about 5505⁰celcius. Recent research done by NASA confirm that the gravity of the sun is 28 times that of the earth and the escape velocity is approximately 55 times that of the planet earth.  The sun travels through local interstellar cloud that interacts with the neighboring G-Cloud. The distance is estimated to be 17light years away from the earth. The sun is magnetically active celestial body that has a varying magnetic field. By research, the sun is the only star with magnetic field loops due to high rotation at the center of approximate 25 days and low rotation at the poles of about 35 days (BBC Corporation, 2013). The sun orbits the milky way at the center, the celestial body completes one clockwise orbital revolution in about 225-250 million years as viewed from the galactic north pole. The sun is clearly visible from the sky during the day and it is the sole differentiator between day and night. There are many probes about the sun by astronauts, philosophers and on lesser ground, the earlier natives of the earth.