Our Solar System
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2. The Sun

The Solar System is made up of:


The Sun: although the Sun is just an average star compared to other stars, it is by far the largest object in the solar system. The Sun is more than 500 times the mass of everything else in the solar system combined!
The temperature at the surface of the Sun is about 5.600 Celsius.
The temperature rises from the surface of the Sun inward towards the very hot centre of the Sun where it reaches about 15.000.000 Celsius.
The temperature of the Sun also rises from the surface outward into the Solar atmosphere. The uppermost layer of the Solar atmosphere, called the corona, reaches temperatures of millions of degrees. The corona is the bright halo of light that can be seen during a total Solar eclipse.

The Sun is mostly composed of the elements hydrogen (H) and helium (He). By mass the composition of the sun is 92.1% hydrogen and 7.9% helium. Various elements make up less than 0.1% of the mass of the sun (oxygen, carbon, iron and other elements).

This video shows the scales of known stars in our Milky Way galaxy and shows you just how big, or small, the Sun really is. This short video was taken from the planetarium show, The Sun — Our Living Star.



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