Our Sun

Discussion in 'Astronomy, Exobiology, & Cosmology' started by Orleander, Jul 25, 2007.

  1. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Our planet is hottest at the equator. Is that how our sun is too? And does our sun have an official name or is it just 'the sun'?
     
    Last edited: Jul 25, 2007
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  3. Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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    Your plant?
     
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  5. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    Our planet is hottest at the equator because that region receives more heat and light than any other part of the the planet.

    No.

    Yes, it's proper name is Sol.
     
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  7. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    so where is the sun hottest at?
    And it doesn't have a number??
     
  8. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    It's pretty much the same all over although, of course, it can vary somewhat for a while from place to place. Remember it's MAKING the heat - the Earth is only receiving it.

    A number? You mean like on star charts? Why would it? We know where it's located and even named it long ago.

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  9. Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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    Is the sun hottest at the surface, or the centre?
     
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    The Earth is warmest at the equator because the sun's rays hit there at less of an angle than towards the poles, therefore it's energy is not as spread out.
     
  11. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    My husband told me this and...well, is it true?
    The Sun had two north poles in 2000.
     
  12. Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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  13. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    Nick, you rock! Thanks

    so, what about that 2 north poles thing?
     
  14. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    It's not at all uncommon for the Sun to have multiple poles. And there's always a matching south pole for every north pole.

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    It's because the Sun is a HUGE magnetic generator - that's what powers sunspots and solar flares.
     
  15. Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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    Check out 09:10mins into the video.

    10:00mins into the video they show you a magnetogram.
     
  16. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Orleander:

    Earth is hottest at the equator because the Sun's light hits the equator more "straight on" than at an angle. Take a tennis ball and shine a torch at it from the side. The light is brightest at the "equator" of the ball, where it hits straight on. At the "poles" of the ball, the light hits at an angle. The net effect is that the energy per unit area is higher at the equator than at the poles.

    It's just "The Sun". Our moon is also just "The Moon". They were both named long before anyone realised there were other suns or other moons.

    Sometimes, people will say the Sun's name is "Sol". But "Sol" is just a Greek word meaning "Sun", so it's not really a different name.

    In the centre of the Sun (the sun is a ball). At the visible surface of the sun, which is what you see when you stare at it, the temperature is "only" around 6000 degrees Celcius. The temperature of the Sun's surface is no different at the poles than at the equator.

    It depends what you mean by "pole". The Earth has two types of poles: magnetic poles and geographic poles. The North and South geographic poles are the points the Earth would rotate around if you imagine a straight line drawn through the Earth. The North and South magnetic poles are the points at which the magnetic field of the Earth is the strongest (think of the Earth as containing a big bar magnet). The magnetic poles are at an angle to the geographic poles of the Earth.

    The Sun also has geographic north and south poles, which are specified by its rotation in the same way as the Earth's geographic poles. It only ever has two of those: north and south.

    The Sun's magnetic field, on the other hand, is very complicated, and it can have multiple regions of stronger or weaker field at different points on its surface. So, this is maybe what was being talked about when it was said the Sun has two North poles in 2000.
     
  17. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    so not only can it have more than one magnetic north pole, it moves? Does our move?
     
  18. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    The answer to both is yes.

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    As I said earlier, the Sun often has more than one pair of magnetic poles - it's FAR from being as stable as planet!

    And yes, the Earth's magnetic poles move also. In fact they've reversed position several times in the past millions of years. Another interesting thing about the Earth's poles reversing is that just before they make the final switch, several pairs of poles appear here also - much like on the Sun.

    Edit: Almost forgot - not only does the Sun often have more than one north pole, it ALWAYS has an equal number of south poles. They only come in pairs.

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  19. Yorda Registered Senior Member

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    but isn't the centre of the sun solid?

    what astronaut was stupid enough to go there and measure it?

    wow, you've learned the basics about magnetism.
     
  20. draqon Banned Banned

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  21. Orleander OH JOY!!!! Valued Senior Member

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    I take it faded doesn't mean disappeared. This is where my husband got his info.
    http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/22apr_currentsheet.htm

    Normally, our star, like Earth itself, has a north and a south magnetic pole. But for nearly a month beginning in March 2000, the Sun's south magnetic pole faded, and a north pole emerged to take its place. The Sun had two north poles.

    "It sounds impossible, but it's true," says space physicist Pete Riley of Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) in San Diego. "In fact, it's a fairly normal side-effect of the solar cycle." Every 11 years around solar maximum, the Sun's magnetic field goes haywire as the Sun's underlying magnetic dynamo reorganizes itself. The March 2000 event was simply a part of that upheaval.
     
  22. draqon Banned Banned

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    11 year cycle is reality and greenhouse activists sure do forget about it.
     
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Good thing I popped over from the Linguistics subforum just in time.

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    Sol is the Latin word, which was passed down intact in Spanish. The Greek word for "sun" is helios. Same Indo-European root, different phonetic shifts.
    Isn't the center of the sun a gigantic nuclear reaction? That would mean it's not even all matter, much less solid matter.
    We number stars we see from a great distance so when we talk about them we'll all know which one we mean. We don't have to do that with the sun, we can just say "the big yellow thing over there." The astronomers in another solar system will have a number or other identification system for our sun, and none for theirs.

    Astronomers give cryptic numerical IDs to stars that have been discovered recently with high power telescopes. But the old system was more colorful. Stars have a two-part name. The second component is the name of the constellation it's in (the Latin genitive form of the name, to be precise). The first component is a sequential letter in the Greek alphabet denoting its relative brightness in the constellation. Alpha Centauri is the brightest star (alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet) in the constellation Centaurus, the centaur in English. Centauri is the dative case of centaurus.

    The star Tau Ceti has become famous for reasons one of the astronomers here will hopefully explain in about two hours, and it was mentioned a number of times on Star Trek TNG. Cetus is the Latin word for "whale," whence our word "cetacean," and ceti is its genitive form, "belonging to the whale." Tau is the 19th letter of the Greek alphabet, and Tau Ceti is the nineteenth-brightest star in the constellation of the Whale.

    As any astrologer will tell you, the Sun appears to move in a big circle so that it is "in" a different constellation every month. (We can't see it because it's daylight but both astrologers and astronomers know exactly where the sun is at every moment, which I suppose is rather comforting.) We could call the Sun Alpha Capricorni in January, but then in February we'd have to rename it--and every other star in Capricorn gets a promotion to the next higher level of brightness. That is all just way too confusing--and way too much work in the days before computers--so we just call it "the Sun."

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    Last edited: Jul 27, 2007

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