HERE COMES THE SUN by Blog Dog Dan

Photo taken by SOHO spacecraft

Who had the "bright" idea to talk about the sun today - yep, that would be me!  Our sun is a star that is 4.5 billion years old!  The distance between the Earth and sun is about 93 million miles.  At present, the sun is about 70% hydrogen with 28% helium and 2% metals.  Our sun is about 100 times wider than the Earth and is the largest object of our solar system  In fact, it contains more than 99.8% of the total mass of the solar system.  If you weighed 50 pounds on Earth, you would weigh 1400 pounds on the sun!  

The first successful picture taken of the sun on April 2, 1845.

The earth spins in a counterclockwise direction on its axis every day (rotation).  This accounts for the fact that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west.  It takes the earth 365.26 days to orbit the sun (that's about 67,000 miles per hour!), or what we call a year.  The reason for our seasons is the tilt of the Earth on its axis and its position as it goes around the sun.    


Custer II

The Wilcox Solar Observatory in California has studied the sun since 1975.  A lot of satellites have been launched over the years to study the sun.  Yohkoh, a Japanese satellite, was launched in 1992 to take pictures of the sun.  Some satellites like Wind and Ulysses (launched in 1994 and 1995) study the solar wind.  SOHO was launched in 1995 and studies the sun 24 hours a day!  Cluster II is four identical satellites launched in 2000 that will give us the first detailed three-dimensional study of Earth's magnetic field and the solar wind. You can go to nasa.gov to see all the missions - check out the NASA Kids' Club, too.  Also, kidsgeo.com is a great site! 

South Pole

I hope that after you read my post and see the sun rising in the east, you'll appreciate the day a little more.  You'll really appreciate it when I tell you this:  The North and South Poles have dramatic seasonal swings in the amount of sunlight they receive - for six months of the year, the sun never rises over one pole and never sets over the other.      

I hope you have a very sunny day and I will leave you with an Irish blessing:

May flowers always line your path and sunshine light your day.
May songbirds serenade you every step along the way.
May a rainbow run beside you in a sky that's always blue.
And may happiness fill your heart each day your whole life through.

Enjoy the video Mr. Sun:  http://youtu.be/J4EJrweqv50