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- It is about 4.5 billion years old. In another 5 billion years the Sun will become a big, cool star called a red giant. A few billion years after that, it will become a small white dwarf star. It will shrink to around the same size as Earth, but it will weigh 20,000 times more.
spaceplace.nasa.gov/all-about-the-sun/en/All About the Sun | NASA Space Place – NASA Science for Kids
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The Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago in a giant, spinning cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. As the nebula collapsed under its own gravity, it spun faster and flattened into a disk. Most of the nebula's material was pulled toward the center to form our Sun, which accounts for 99.8% of our solar system’s mass.
Oct 18, 2023 · Our Sun is a middle-aged star, approximately 4.6 billion years old. It formed from the gravitational collapse of a region within a large molecular cloud primarily composed of hydrogen and...
- How The Sun Formed
- Internal Structure and Atmosphere of The Sun
- The Sun's Magnetic Field
- Chemical Composition of The Sun
- Sunspots and Solar Cycles
- History of Observing The Sun
The sun was born about 4.6 billion years ago. Many scientists think the sun and the rest of the solar system formed from a giant, rotating cloud of gas and dust known as the solar nebula. As the nebula collapsed because of its gravity, it spun faster and flattened into a disk. Most of the material was pulled toward the center to form the sun. Relat...
The sun and the atmosphere of the sun are divided into several zones and layers. The solar interior, from the inside out, is made up of the core, radiative zone and the convective zone. The solar atmosphere above that consists of the photosphere, chromosphere, a transition region and the corona. Beyond that is the solar wind, an outflow of gas from...
The sun's magnetic field is typically only about twice as strong as Earth's magnetic field. However, it becomes highly concentrated in small areas, reaching up to 3,000 times stronger than usual. These kinks and twists in the magnetic field develop because the sun spins more rapidly at the equator than at higher latitudes and because the inner part...
Just like most other stars, the sun is made up mostly of hydrogen, followed by helium. Nearly all the remaining matter consists of seven other elements — oxygen, carbon, neon, nitrogen, magnesium, iron and silicon. For every 1 million atoms of hydrogen in the sun, there are 98,000 of helium, 850 of oxygen, 360 of carbon, 120 of neon, 110 of nitroge...
Sunspots are relatively cool, dark features on the sun's surface that are often roughly circular. They emerge where dense bundles of magnetic field lines from the sun's interior break through the surface. The number of sunspots varies as solar magnetic activity does — the change in this number, from a minimum of none to a maximum of roughly 250 sun...
Ancient cultures often modified natural rock formations or built stone monuments to mark the motions of the sun and moon, charting the seasons, creating calendars and monitoring eclipses. Many believed the sun revolved around the Earth, with the ancient Greek scholar Ptolemy formalizing this "geocentric" model in 150 B.C. Then, in 1543, Nicolaus Co...
- One million Earths could fit inside the Sun. A hollow Sun would fit around 960,000 spherical Earths. If squished inside with no wasted space, then around 1,300,000 would fit inside.
- The Sun contains 99.86% of the mass in the Solar System. The mass of the Sun is approximately 330,000 times greater than that of Earth. It is almost three quarters Hydrogen, whilst most of the remaining mass is Helium.
- The Sun is an almost perfect sphere. There is a 10-kilometre difference between the Sun’s polar and equatorial diameter. This means it is the closest thing to a perfect sphere that has been observed in nature.
- The Sun will consume the Earth. When the Sun has burned all its Hydrogen, it will continue to burn helium for 130 million more years. During this time, it will expand to the point that it will engulf Mercury, Venus, and the Earth.
May 25, 2021 · If our Sun is four and a half billion years old, how much longer will it shine? Stars like our Sun burn for about nine or 10 billion years. So our Sun is about halfway through its life.
Feb 2, 2024 · The sun has already existed for about 4.5 billion years. The process of nuclear fusion, which creates the heat and light that make life on our planet possible, is also the process that slowly changes the sun’s composition.
For the Sun, this is expected to occur in about five billion years. It is likely to engulf Mercury and Venus - and potentially even the Earth. It will eventually shrink to become a planetary nebula with a white dwarf at its core.
