THE SUN

The Sun is not a planet but a star. It is made up of different gasses and elements. 

It is a spectral type G2 V with an apparent magnitude of -26.72 and an absolute magnitude of 4.85. The Sun is HUGE when compared all the planets in the Solar System. The Sun could hold about 1.3 million Earths. The Sun is six hundred times bigger than ALL the material in the Solar System put together!

Hydrogen gas makes up the fuel for the Sun to burn. The Sun uses about four MILLION TONS of hydrogen gas every SECOND!  The heat, light and vitamins produced by the Sun allow life to exist on Earth.

The Sun has a core that is about the size of Jupiter.  In the core, there are chemical reactions that produce temperatures as high as 27 MILLION degrees (F). The surface of the Sun is called the photosphere which is a boiling see of gas about ten thousand degrees (F).

The Sun also has 'storms' on it's surface known as sunspots and prominences (flares). Prominences can travel up to two hundred miles per SECOND and stretch for more than one-hundred thousand miles.

The inner atmosphere of the Sun is called the chromosphere and an outer atmosphere called the corona. The corona stretches outward for millions of miles into space. The corona is what you see when the Moon covers the Sun during an eclipse.

NEVER LOOK DIRECTLY AT THE SUN! SEVERE EYE DAMAGE OR BLINDNESS COULD OCCUR. The safest way to observe the Sun is to go to your local observatory. If you do not have an observatory in your area, you can poke a small hole in a piece of cardboard and project the Sun's image through the hole onto another piece of paper. NEVER use exposed film or welders glass to look at the Sun. Use only specially made solar filters.