How do we see the sun?

[Sonia]

Something for me to do this evening, so either read or ignore

Since the ancient times, people think of the sun as being important in their/our lives. It gives us warmth and light, which is loved and feared. For us astronomers, it is our nearest star, that helps us put an insight of millions of other stars seen in the night skies. Its huge, bright yellow glowing object - even so that its warmth can become a danger to us all even to look at directly. But in astronomical terms its nearby 93 million miles away from Earth. And they say its nearby hey? We see the sun as a bright yellow object, but without the equipment today we wouldnt of been able to study about it. Total eclipses provide rare oppurtunities to see how the sun works. Moon passes in front of the sun and blocks it out completely from the photosphere (the surface that is visible). During the few minutes the moon obscures the bright photosphere and maybe see the suns corona like the eclipse in 1998. The corona, photosphere and the prominences give it away that the sun is not just glowing quietly. Things are going on that gives rise to great upheaveals and indicate an underlying power source. With the temperatures that are several million oC, it is rather, extremely hot, so much hotter than the photophere would be, probably about 5500oC. Corona streams out several billions of kilometres above the suns surface extending miles and miles and miles away. It is actually the bright light believe it or not from the suns photosphere that makes our sky blue. We can observe the suns nature with sunspots, dark patches that are on the photosphere, that can last up to a few weeks and maybe longer, caused by the magnetic fields that are strong. Sunspots are sooo hot and give out light.

Its radiowaves are weaker than the visible light. The Earths atmosphere shields us from the suns harmful rays.

The sun is probably 400 times bigger than our satellite, but further away, this makes out that the moon and sun look the same size or have the same angular size.

[mark RD]

Very informative, Id forgotten alot of info you got there

Mark

[Naz]

Until the advent of nuclear physics, some prominent astronomers believed that the Sun was burning coal!!! :shock:

Keep them coming Sonia.

nabban