Page 2 Our Sun
Welcome to some more notes from the Vega Baja Astronomy Group. As it's summer we are having the first of 2 articles about our own star, the sun.
Its proper title is a type G2 main sequence star. This is because there are many star types, red giants, white dwarfs etc. Ours is an example of a star in the most common family of types, which is just as well for us as all life on earth depends on that.
The sun is about 150,000km away, if it were much closer or distant, life on earth would probably not exist. If you could put it in some scales, it would mass around 330,000 times more than earth - very big and heavy to us, but a tiddler compared to some stars. It's about 4.5 billion years old, and won't change much for another 5 billion years. All very impressive for what is essentially a ball of gas.
Of all the stars, we know more about the sun than any other, for obvious reasons, it's the nearest. We need to know everything we can about it, because all life depends on it. Tiny changes in the sun have dramatic effects on our lives.
The most obvious of these is what's called a C.M.E, a Coronal Mass Ejection, a sort of solar burp as one astronomer called it. A huge ejection of gas and plasma from the sun that carries lots of energy and charged particles. If these come toward the earth, we get spectacular northern and southern lights, the Aurora. If we get a really big CME, the energy is so great it can knock out whole electricity grids. One of the most famous was in 1989 in Canada, when millions of people were without power for over 12 hours. That's quite a burp!
That's a tiny look at our star, more next month, clear skies to you all. Please turn to page 25 to find out about our next observation evening. Charles Oates, Vega Baja Astronomy Group.
QF Focus Magazine
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