SUN

SUN

It would take more than a million earths to make a star as large as the sun. The sun has a diameter of 866,000 miles, but it is hundreds of times smaller than Antares or Betelgeuse, two of the brightest stars. The sun's surface has an estimated temperature of 10,000 Fahrenheit, and its center is much hotter. To generate as much heat as the sun radiates, a powe station on earth would have to burn many thousands of millions of tons of coal every second.

Scientists can recognize in the sun many elements which we know on earth. These have been detected in the gases on the sun's surface by the use of an instrument called a spectograph. More than sixty of the chemical elements, such as hydrogen, oxygen and helium, are found on the sun. So are elements such as iron, copper, aluminum, nickel, silver and lead. Because of the sun's intense heat, these are present in gaseous form instead of as metals.