Sun

This picture was acquired from NASA's Skylab space station on December 19, 1973. It shows one of the most spectacular solar flares ever recorded. The average temperature on the sun is 7000° F.

The sun is actually a star. It is 332,830 times bigger than Earth. It is not solid, but it is made up of gas. It is spinning around, but it takes almost four weeks to make one full turn instead of only 24 hours. Sometimes there are dark patches on the sun. These patches are called sunspots and look black because they are not as hot as the gas around them. These spots do not last for more than a few days or a few weeks, and at times there may be no sunspots at all. The sun is made up primarily of hydrogen and helium, but also contains oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, neon, iron, silicon, magnesium, and sulfur.

Interesting Facts
· Sunspots look dark on the sun. But if you could see a typical sunspot in the night sky, it would be 10 times brighter than a full moon.
· The force of gravity at the sun's surface is about 28 times stronger than it is at Earth's surface.
· If you weigh 100 pounds on Earth, you would weigh about 2,800 pounds- more than a ton- on the Sun.

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Other Sites
· The Nine Planets (http://www.planets4kids.com/portfoli.htm)
· Kids Astronomy.com (http://www.kidsastronomy.com/sun.htm)
· Introduction to the Nine Planets (http://www.seds.org/billa/tnp/sun.html)