What is the Sun?
Powers of Ten™: The famous video from 1977 that explains the scale of the universe (YouTube)The Sun (Wikipedia)Formation of the Sun (Wikipedia)The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old: Facts about the Sun’s age, size & history (Space.com)How is a star born? (Scientific American)How does a star ignite? (Physics Stack Exchange)Cosmic dust (Wikipedia)All you need is cold gas: The legacy of K. E. Edgeworth (NED)Stars form out in the cold & fuel the growth of supermassive black holes (SMH)Newton's laws (Hyperphysics)Animation of Jupiter seen in the infrared (NASA/JPL Caltech)What is fusion (livescience)Nuclear fusion (Hyperphysics)Nuclear fusion in stars (Wikipedia)After 60 years, is nuclear fusion finally poised to deliver? (The Guardian)Chain reaction (Wikipedia)Diana Ross: Chain Reaction (YouTube)The Sun's structure & energy production (Wikipedia)National Ignition Facility recreates the interior of heavy stars (ars Technica)Naming conventions for our Sun or 'Sol' (Wikipedia)Parker Solar Probe: Humanity’s first visit to a star (NASA)Sunshine (IMDb)It sounds like stars do all seem to start with hydrogen: Star formation (Wikipedia)Stars (NASA)Main sequence stars (CSIRO)Post-main sequence stars (CSIRO)There is a minimum mass for stars: ~8% of the mass of the Sun, lower than that & the internal pressure from gravity is too low to trigger the necessary nuclear reactions (NASA)The Sun consumes about 600 million tonnes of hydrogen per second (NASA)The future of the Sun: After core hydrogen exhaustion (Wikipedia)Helium 'burning' & the helium flash: In post-main sequence stars, helium nuclei fuse to eventually form carbon-12 (CSIRO) Modelling a star on a computer (Western Michigan University)The CNO cycle (Cosmos)Will the sun go supernova in six years & destroy Earth? (Ask an Astronomer)Iron & nickel are the heaviest elements that can be made in stars like our Sun that don't undergo supernova explosions (NASA)Red giant stars (Cosmos)Cold dead star may be a giant diamond (Space.com)Measuring a white dwarf star (NASA)The electromagnetic spectrum (NASA)What is Earth's magnetic field? (Universe Today)The 11-year cycle of solar minimums & maximums (NASA)The sun is so hot it's mostly made of plasma (NASA)Convection zone (Wikipedia)Structure of stars showing convection zones (ESO)Understanding the magnetic sun (NASA)The singing sun: Listen to the sound the sun makes! (Stanford Solar Center)The corona of the Sun, it's outer atmosphere (NASA)Why is the Sun's corona the hottest layer when it's farther from the core than other layers? (Scientific American)What are sun spots? (Wikipedia)Coronal mass ejection (Wikipedia)What is solar wind? (QRG, Northwestern University)No more solar wind for Voyager 1 spacecraft (Phys.org)The Voyagers have reached an anniversary worth celebrating (ars Technica)What is an aurora? (NASA)Solar storm & space weather FAQ (NASA)Can solar flares hurt astronauts? (Universe Today)Fast & slow solar wind (Wikipedia)The Carrington Event of 1859 (Wikipedia)How are the astronauts in the ISS protected from solar flares? (Space Exploration, Stack Exchange)Who's afraid of a solar flare? (NASA)What if the biggest solar storm on record happened today? (National Geographic)Did a massive solar proton event fry the Earth? (Space Daily)1 in 8 chance of catastrophic solar megastorm by 2020 (Wired)Corrections
The sun will eventually become a red giant (not a red dwarf) & then a white dwarf (Space.com)It sounds like Saturn, not Jupiter, emits infrared radiation from frictional heating - Jupiter's 'glow' is thought to be from cooling left over from its formation (LibreTexts Physics)Apparently the sun is only half way through its main sequence lifecycle (Wikipedia)The sun won’t die for 5 billion years (The Conversation)Estimates vary, but it's agreed it takes a LONG time for a photon to escape the sun (Futurism)Why does it take thousands of years for light to escape the Sun? (Ask a Mathematician/Physicist)Check out our new Fireside home
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