Category Archives: Sun

Stonehenge and the Summer Solstice

Everyone is familiar with the famous landmark Stonehenge located in Wiltshire, England. The first construction on Stonehenge was start about 5,000 years ago. We are still not sure what the original purpose of Stonehenge is but people have speculated that…

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Total Solar Eclipse

People have been fascinated with total solar eclipses. Part of that fascination comes from how rare they are. Solar eclipses occur every 18 months on average, but what makes them so rare is that they are visible from limited number of locations on Earth. It ends up being that a particular location would observe a […] Continue reading

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Wait, It’s How Big?

Most people are probably aware that our solar system is REALLY BIG. They probably also know that the Sun is much larger than anything else in the solar system. However, a number on the subject might surprise people: 99.8%. That’s how much of our solar system’s total mass is located in the Sun. All the […] Continue reading

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The Sun: Our Source of Light

Our Sun is massive! It is 333,000 times the Earth’s mass. It provides all the light and other energy we need to survive – which is pretty impressive within itself.  The sun is made mostly of helium and hydrogen and exists as plasma instead of a solid. But, what makes the sun shine? Some people… Continue reading

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Now You See Me

The sun is what gives us life, sustains humanity, and provides our planet with everything it needs to survive day to day.  Without Such an important star we would cease to exist.  Although the sun is the most important thing to our survival we don’t know a whole lot about it.  We know some details […] Continue reading

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Am I beautiful enough for you?

Every teenager can confess to that one time when they saw a girl and thought she was the one. She was absolutely perfect, in looks and in personality. Let’s be real, it was only the looks. But when she got acne, that aura of divine beauty around her suddenly disappeared for you. You found it […] Continue reading

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Goodness Gracious, Great Balls of Fire

The Sun is often referred to as a great big ball of burning gas, perhaps most famously by Pumbaa in Disney’s The Lion King. This is actually a misconception because the hydrogen in the Sun does not burn, but rather emits energy through the process of nuclear fusion. If the Sun was really burning, then […] Continue reading

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The Prodigious Sun

Is the Sun an efficient producer of energy via nuclear fusion? While humanity may be years away from commercializing nuclear fusion power, the Sun has been doing it for a while now (and for free!). The Sun is the most efficient generator of nuclear power in our solar system. Inside the Sun, nuclear reactions are … Continue reading The Prodigious Sun Continue reading

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Biggest Solar Flare of 2014

In late February, the Sun let of the largest solar flare of the new year. Classified as a X4.9 solar flare, it was one of the strongest not only of this year but also in recent years. The flare was released with a huge coronal mass ejection ejecting clouds of electrons and atoms. X-class solar… Continue reading

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The Sun is Not On Fire

In the video above, it may seem that the sun is a boiling ball of fire.  Fires provide us light and heat similar to our sun, so it makes sense that people would think that the sun actually is a ball of fire.  However, fire requires a chemical to be burned.  The sun is made up […] Continue reading

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