The sun warms and illuminates our planet. Life on it would be impossible without the energy of the star. This applies to man, and to the entire terrestrial flora, fauna. The sun energizes all the processes taking place on Earth. The Earth receives not only light and heat from the Sun. Particle streams and various types of solar radiation continuously influence the life of our planet.
The impact of the sun greatly affects human health. Magnetic storms in many people cause a deterioration in well-being.
This article will discuss general information about the Sun, namely the composition, temperature and mass of the Sun, the effect on the Earth, etc.
general information
The sun is the star closest to us. Studies of the Sun provide information on the conditions of reactions occurring in its bowels and on the surface, allow us to understand the physical nature of stellar bodies, which we see as dimensionless sparkling points. Studying the processes occurring in the vicinity and on the surface of the Sun helps to understand the phenomena characteristic of near-Earth space.
The sun is the center of our planetary system, which also includes 8 planets, dozens of planetary satellites, thousands of asteroids, meteor bodies, comets, interplanetary gas, dust. In the entire solar system, the mass of the sun occupies 99.866% of the total mass. By astronomical standards, the distance from the Sun to the Earth is small: the light goes only 8 minutes.
The size of the sun requires special attention. This is a huge star not only in size but also in volume. Its diameter exceeds the diameter of the Earth 109 times, the volume, in turn - 1.3 million times.
The approximate temperature of the surface of the Sun is 5800 degrees, so it shines almost
white, but due to the strong absorption and scattering of the short-wave portion of the spectrum by the atmosphere of the globe, direct sunlight near the surface of our planet gets a yellow tint.
The temperature in the central zone of the Sun reaches 15 million degrees. Due to the rather high temperature, the Sun’s substance is in a gaseous state, and in the bowels of a giant star the atoms of chemical elements are divided into freely moving electrons and atomic nuclei.
Mass of the Sun - 1.989 * 10 ^ 30 kg This figure exceeds the mass of the globe by 333 thousand times. The average density of the substance is 1.4 g / cm3. The average density of the Earth is almost 4 times higher. In addition, in astronomy there is the concept of the mass of the Sun - a unit of mass that is used to express the mass of stars and other objects of astronomy (galaxies).
The gaseous solar mass is held by a general attraction to its center. The upper layers compress deeper with their weight, and with increasing depth of the layer, the pressure increases.
The pressure in the bowels of the sun reaches hundreds of billions of atmospheres, so the substance in the solar depths has a high density.
This leads to thermonuclear reactions in the bowels of the sun, as a result of which hydrogen turns into helium and releases nuclear energy. Gradually, this energy “seeps” through opaque solar matter, first into the outer layers, and then radiates into world space.
The composition of the Sun includes such elements as hydrogen (73%), helium (25%) and other elements in a much lower concentration (nickel, nitrogen, sulfur, carbon, calcium, iron, oxygen, silicon, magnesium, neon, chromium).