Do you know Members of the solar system - The sun?

• The sun is at the center of the solar system.
• Its size is thirteen lakh times as that of the earth.

• It is the nearest star to the earth.

• It is an ultimate source of energy for life on earth.

• Its diameter is 14 lakh kms.
• It is composed of 71% hydrogen, 26.5% helium and 2.5% other elements.
• Hydrogen and helium are the main gases present in the sun.
• Within the sun, hydrogen is converted to helium due to nuclear fusion releasing a tremendous amount of heat and light.
• It has a surface temperature of about 6000 degree c.
• The temperature at the center is around 15,000,000 degree c.
• Shining surface of the sun is called photosphere, it appears like a disc, radiates energy and act as a source of energy.
• The outer layer of the sun’s atmosphere made up of thin hot gases, is called corona. Corona is visible only during a total eclipse of the sun (or with a special solar telescope called coronagraph).
• The planet travels with the sun through millions of stars in our galaxy at a speed of about 70,000 km per hour.
• The sun is about 150 million kms away from the earth.

• Light (at the speed of 3000,000 km per second) takes about 8.5 minutes to reach the earth from the sun.

• Every year Sun loses 360 million tons.

The Sun loses mass in two major ways. The first is through solar winds, the surface of the sun is hot enough that electrons and protons boil off its surface and stream away from the sun. generating a wind of ionized particles, when those particles strike earth’s upper atmosphere they can produce aurora. The solar winds varies a bit in intensity but from satellite observations we know that the sun loses about 1.5 million tones of material each second due to solar wind.