The Solar System (The Sun)

The solar system diagram.
(artist conception)
Credits: NASA/JPL

Layers of the Sun
Credits: NASA

   The solar system, the Sun and the Planets makes up the Solar System that we are in. The sun, the heat and light provider, also holds the planets in its orbit. The closest planet, Mercury, is kind of like the moon, except a little bigger, and has a bigger temperature extreme. Next, Venus, is blanketed in a heavy block of greenhouses gas, making this planet the hottest of all. Earth, our home, is the planet closest to the sun with life, and with a moon. Mars, red and dusty (at times), has a thin atmosphere, and possibly can harbor life. Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, is a gas giant. Saturn, although not bigger than Jupiter, is the most dense of all the planets. Uranus is the coldest of any planet, although not the farthest. Neptune, has high winds, along with a dark blue spot (a hurricane), has a lot of air in the planet. Pluto, we named a dwarf planet in 2006, after scientists decided that its size was not at the required size, however, this 'planet' does have a very thin atmosphere.

The sun.
Credits: NASA.

    The sun is the biggest celestial body in the solar system, (but is very small compared to many other stars) takes up 99.8% of the masses of celestial bodies in the solar system. Formed 4.6 billion years ago, the sun has a predicted life of 5 billion years left to go, with the star expanding very little every year (soon it get so big, it will just explode to be a red giant, and collapse to be a white dwarf, and then cool down to be a black dwarf).

Largest sunspot since 1990.
Credits: NASA/SDO

    The sun is so large than more than a million Earths would equal the size of the sun, and the star's diameter is 109 times of the Earth's. The very outside layer of the sun is very hot, 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the core can reach up to 27 million degrees Fahrenheit, with nuclear reactions giving the star energy, light, and heat. The sun produces so much energy that it will take 100 billions tons of dynamite to match the energy shot out by the sun every second.  The sun's layers are as follows: Photosphere (the part we see, 300 miles thick), Chromosphere (600 miles thick), Corona (some thousands of miles thick), and is the outermost layer, and lastly the inner core, the hottest part of the sun, with temperatures of 27 millions degrees Fahrenheit. The photosphere produces the light and heat we get from the sun, the chromosphere gives off ultraviolet light, and the Corona gives the sun its magnetic field, and solar wind. There are also a lot of activities on the surface of the sun, like sunspots, which are 'black spots' (captured in infrared) of cooler parts in the sun. Every eleven years, the sun would have a minimum of sunspots, which are cooler spots on the sun.

Solarwinds being ejected from the Sun.
Credits: NASA, ESA

     The solar wind are waves of particles and plasma shot out from the sun out to the planets, and other celestial bodies in the solar system. Shot out from the corona, (too high temperature, too less gravity) these particles leave the sun, and into the outer space reaching speeds of 500 miles per second, or a minimum of 200 miles per second. The plasma is highly charged positive and negative particles that acts like a magnetic field and turns more to gas as the heat and pressure falls. The Earth is always constantly getting hit by these solar winds, however, the Earth's magnetic field protects the planet from the winds.
 

Coronal Mass Ejection
Credits: NASA SOHO LAB

     These solar wind are blasted from the sun from coronal mass ejections, which cause interference with electrical components, and can do some serious damage to electrical grids, satellites, which can take months to repair, and can do this damage to a whole continent. These explosions happened when the surface of the sun (photosphere), gets very hot, but the corona gets even hotter, and thus it throws out some of the particles of the sun, making it look like a hoop on the sun.

The moon transits twice across the sun,
captured by NASA SDO satellite.
Credits: NASA

    The sun takes about 250 million years or more to complete an orbit around the Milky Way Galaxy (not the Samsung Galaxy, nor the candy), and the sun is listed in the star group of Population I, which are young stars, which have elements heavier than helium. The sun is also one of the 100 billion stars in the galaxy, so to out of the galaxy orbiters, the sun is not really noticeable.

Sun's surface (see the coronal loops?)
Credits: NASA/Solar Dynamics LAB

Bibliography

Choi, Charles. "Earth's Sun: Facts, About the Sun's Age and History" Space.com November 14, 2017. Retrieved at October 3, 2018 from
https://www.space.com/58-the-sun-formation-facts-and-characteristics.html/.

Redd, Nola. "What is Solar Wind?" Space.com May 18, 2018. Retrieved at October 4, 2018 from:
https://www.space.com/22215-solar-wind.html/.

also go to:

https://www.space.com/37738-solar-eclipses-secrets-of-solar-wind.html