1. The Sun

Welcome to Give Me Space! Today’s blog will feature the Sun. On this journey, throughout space, we will learn about a range of different topics, from the solar system to the galaxies. I hope you will enjoy this journey with me. So lets start with the brightest and closest star in our night sky, the sun!

 The Sun is a massive object. it accounts for 99% of the entire mass of the solar system! (weight and size.) But, just how massive, you ask? The circumference (distance of the equator) is 4 million km. To put this into perspective, the biggest planet in our solar system, Jupiter, is only 400,000 or one tenth the size! The sun is most certainly the biggest celestial body in the solar system. It's so big, you would have to get 1.3 million Earth sized planets inside to get to the mass of the sun.

The sun is in the middle of the solar system. The reason why is because the sun has by far the most weight. This means it has the most gravitational pull, which means that everything around it (including meteors and comets) will circle around it, this is known as an orbit.

The sun’s surface temperature is very, very hot. The Sun's surface and corona (atmosphere) can reach up to 5504 degrees Celsius. and that's not even the hottest part! The core can reach 15 million degrees! But you can't get to the core without going through the surface, and even that is so hot you would burn to death if you got anywhere near it.

Sometimes huge explosions happen on the surface of the sun. They are called solar flares. These look like enormous loops and you can actually see them coming out of the Sun. These intense flares are caused by The Sun's erratic magnetic field, which sometimes becomes too tangled and simply ignites. This is a burst of a radiation of magnetic energy. They spread millions of kilometres from the surface of the Sun and are absolutely massive!

There is another type of danger from the Sun known as solar wind. in a quick summary, Solar wind is not like the wind you experience on Earth. It has tiny charged particles that you can't see in it. you may think that something that tiny could not do much damage, but it can cause the loss of connection from satellites, and it can mess with your brains magnetic compass. but other than that, they are practically harmless and they can go as far as Neptune and Pluto!

It’s a long way to the sun. 149 million km is the distance you'll have to travel when you want to have a look at the sun. even at the speed of light, 300,000 km per second, it will still take you 8 whole minutes to get there! But it's not like you'd want to go there or even get remotely close to it, as when you get within 5 million km of the sun your rocket will shrivel up from the intense heat.

The Sun is approximately four and a half billion years old. 5 billion years from now and The Sun will begin expanding at a rapid rate. This will mean it becomes a red giant, and swallow the planet Mercury. But being so big means it will burn a lot of energy, so it won't last much longer. After about a million years of struggling with gravity it will lose. This cause it to contract, and a supernova will occur (an explosion) it will become a white dwarf. Don't worry though, that's in 5 billion years!

That's it for the first post on Give me Space! I hope you learned something new and enjoyed yourself. Make sure to subscribe to my YouTube Channel.

Until next time, Give Me Space!