The Sun: Crash Course Astronomy #10
Phil takes us for a closer (eye safe!) look at the two-octillion ton star that rules our solar system. We look at the sun's core, plasma, magnetic fields, sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass...
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The sun is a star. That’s a profound statement, and one that’s not really all that obvious. Those little sparks in the night sky are pretty, but don’t look anything at all like the hot, blazing orb that lights up our days. It was a pretty remarkable intellectual leap to understand the Sun and the stars are just different flavors of the same kind of object. The only difference is that the Sun is close, but the stars are terribly far away, so they’re fainter. Right away, let’s clear up a misconception: A lot of people say the Sun is a middle-sized, average star. But that’s not fair. Sure, it’s somewhere in the middle of the size range of stars, but the vast majority of stars are dim red dwarfs, far smaller than the Sun. By size and number, the ...
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The sun is a star. That’s a profound statement, and one that’s not really all that obvious. Those little sparks in the night sky are pretty, but don’t look anything at all like the hot, blazing orb that lights up our days. It was a pretty remarkable intellectual leap to understand the Sun and the stars are just different flavors of the same kind of object. The only difference is that the Sun is close, but the stars are terribly far away, so they’re fainter. Right away, let’s clear up a misconception: A lot of people say the Sun is a middle-sized, average star. But that’s not fair. Sure, it’s somewhere in the middle of the size range of stars, but the vast majority of stars are dim red dwarfs, far smaller than the Sun. By size and number, the ...
