The Sun's Properties
What is the primary element that makes up the Sun?
What is hydrogen
What are the three internal layers of the Sun?
What is core, radiative zone, and convection zone
What process produces energy in the Sun?
What is nuclear fusion
What are sunspots?
Temporary phenomena on the Sun's photosphere that appear as spots darker than the surrounding areas.
Who was the first astronomer to study the Sun using a telescope?
Who is Galileo Galilei
What is the Sun's stellar classification?
What is Spectral Type G/Yellow Dwarf
What happens in the core of the Sun?
What is nuclear fusion occurs, converting hydrogen into helium and releasing energy
What is the main byproduct of nuclear fusion in the Sun?
What is helium
What are the two parts of a sunspot?
What are the umbra and penumbra
What is the idea that the Earth is at the center of the Universe?
What is the Geocentric model
What is the equatorial diameter of the Sun?
What is ~1.4 million km
What is the outermost layer of the Sun's atmosphere called?
What is the corona
Describe the next step for the future of the Sun.
When the hydrogen is all gone, the Sun will shrink allowing the core to become even hotter to start helium fusion into carbon and oxygen. The Sun will start to expand again, forming a Red Giant.
Define solar wind.
Solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the upper atmosphere of the Sun.
What scientist is attributed to the heliocentric system?
Nicolaus Copernicus
What is the Sun's surface temperature?
What is 5,500 C
Describe the role of the convective zone.
The convective zone is where heat is transferred to the surface by convection currents
How does the energy from the Sun reach Earth?
Through radiation in the form of electromagnetic waves
What causes a prominence?
Large clouds of plasma rising up in the chromosphere and getting trapped in the magnetic field lines of sunspot pairs.
What major discovery did Sir William Herschel make about the Sun?
He discovered the Sun emits a lot of infrared radiation
Describe differential rotation.
When different parts of a rotating object move with varying velocities at different latitudes
How does the structure of the Sun's layers contribute to solar features like sunspots?
Variations in the flow of energy and magnetic fields in different layers
Describe the 3 steps in the proton-proton chain.
Step 1: Two protons fuse losing mass as a positron, neutrino, and energy forming deuterium.
Step 2: The deuterium nucleus and a proton fuse to make hydrogen-3 releasing gamma ray.
Step 3: Two hydrogen-3 nucleus fuse releasing energy and two protons to form a stable helium nucleus.
Explain the concept of solar cycles.
Solar cycles are approximately 11-year periods during which solar activity fluctuates, affecting the number of sunspots and solar flares
What was Sir Isaac Newton able to do with a glass prism?
Newton separated light from the Sun into different colors and recombined them using a second prism.