Did You Know…? FACTS about the SUN, MOON and STARS

The Sun is a big flaming ball of GAS that is the primary source of light in our solar system, while the Moon is the only naturally formed satellite of the Earth. I’m going to share some amazing information with you regarding the Sun, Moon and Stars. It’s quite fascinating to me how scientists are able to know all of these facts. And until they learn more, this is what they now understand and can inform us about. 

Hello and welcome to Maya. Before we move on, please subscribe to our channel for facts and other fascinating material. 

The Sun

Between 70 and 90% of the mass of the sun is hydrogen; the majority of the remaining material is helium; the remaining trace elements are carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, iron, magnesium, silicon, and sulfur. Nuclear fusion, which results in the conversion of hydrogen into helium, produces energy inside the Sun’s core with a 400 billion Megawatt output. That’s a lot of energy, I admit. And it is not for the powerful gravitational pull of the Sun, BOOM! It would essentially blow up. The Sun uses 4 million tones of hydrogen per second and produces enough energy to power 10 billion nuclear bombs.

The Sun’s surface temperature is only 5,600 degrees Celsius, compared to the core’s 15 million degrees Celsius. At 4.6 billion years old, the flaming gas globe is thought to be in its middle years. According to scientists, it has burned out nearly half of the hydrogen it had stockpiled, leaving enough for another 4.6 million years of burning.

In around 8 minutes, solar light reaches Earth. If you intend to travel there, bring enough sunscreen because the Sun’s surface is approximately 5500 degrees Celsius (9941 degrees Fahrenheit) hot (remembering that the average distance from the Sun to the Earth is around 150 million kilometers).Helium is created when hydrogen nuclei are combined by the Sun to produce enormous amounts of energy. Nuclear fusion is the name given to this process.

Many ancient cultures saw the Sun as a god due to its enormous impact on Earth. As an illustration, the sun deity Ra was worshipped by the Ancient Egyptians, whereas Tonatiuh is the name of the sun god in Aztec mythology. Charged particles like protons and electrons are present in the solar wind that the Sun generates. Due to their great kinetic energy and the Sun’s corona’s high temperature, they are able to escape the Sun’s powerful gravity (a type of plasma atmosphere that extends into space).The majority of these charged particles are successfully deflected as they approach planets with powerful magnetic fields, such as Earth.

The Moon

Because of the Moon’s powerful gravitational attraction, the Earth spins more slowly, giving our days their 24-hour length. A ten-hour day would be possible without the Moon. Moreover, the seasons can be unpredictable if the Earth deviates from its 23.5-degree axis. Moon is the root of the word “month.” The old definition of a month was 29 to 30 days or approximately the 29.5-day lunar cycle. In order for 12 calendar months to make up a full 365-day year, several months were later granted extra days. The 13th full Moon of the year, sometimes known as a “Blue Moon,” occurs every couple of years or so. 

It is the solar system’s fifth-largest moon. Find out more about the solar system’s other moons. The Moon and Earth are separated by 384403 kilometers on average. The impact craters left behind by comets and asteroids that have collided with the Moon’s surface over time are extremely numerous. These craters are still in good shape since the Moon doesn’t have an atmosphere or weather. The Moon has a very hot daytime and very cool nighttime. The Moon’s surface typically has a temperature of -153 degrees Celsius at night and 107 degrees Celsius during the day. The gravitational attraction of the Moon on Earth is a major factor in the tides. When the full Moon comes at perigee, it is called a SUPERMOON. As the gravitational attraction increases, the tides reach higher extremes and the Moon seems 14% bigger and 30% brighter. While the study is ongoing, the majority of scientists concur that the Moon contains trace amounts of water.

complete video to watch here 

The cosmology of Stars

Nebula, vast gaseous regions, are where stars are born. Young stars, or proto stars, begin to emerge in regions of the nebula with thick molecular gas clouds as gravity draws in more and more gas. A star has enough fuel once nuclear fusion has started in the core for it to spend the bulk of its life as a main sequence star, which is its most stable state. Proxima Centauri is our solar system’s second-closest star to Earth after the Sun. It is 4.2 light-years or 39.9 trillion kilometers away. This indicates that it takes 4.2 years for light from this star to reach Earth. The total number of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy ranges between 200 to 400 billion.

The total number of stars in our Milky Way Galaxy ranges between 200 to 400 billion. The Sun, a G2 yellow dwarf star, is the star that is closest to Earth. There are hundreds of billions of stars in each galaxy, and the number of galaxies in the universe is thought to exceed 100 billion. So the staggering total number of stars in the universe—at least 70 sextillion and perhaps even up to 300 sextillion, or 300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—is truly mind-boggling.

Stars typically have ages of between one and ten billion years. Some stars may potentially be older than the observable Universe, which has an age of close to 13.8 billion years. Red dwarf stars are the most frequent stars. They are smaller and lighter than our Sun, burn their fuel more slowly, and have a lifespan longer than any other form of a star—more than 100 billion years. Since red dwarfs are cooler than the majority of stars, they glow less and finally become faint enough to not explode. When hydrogen fuel runs out in yellow dwarf stars like our Sun, the core contracts, heats up, and pushes out the rest of the star, transforming it into a red giant.

Small “white dwarf” stars are created when smaller stars, such as red dwarfs or red giants, start to die due to the exhaustion of their fuel and the slowing of nuclear fusion. These stars continue to radiate white light until they finally turn dark and become “black dwarfs” as they continue to die. Large stars, such as Supergiants and hypergiants, have shorter lifespan because they burn through their fuel more quickly than smaller stars do. These enormous stars die and explode as enormous brilliant supernova. Black holes can actually form from very massive supernova remnant stars. Looking at the stars is like physically looking back in time because it takes millions of years for starlight to reach Earth.

In reality, stars don’t twinkle. They only seem to twinkle because the light that reaches our sight is refracted by turbulences in the Earth’s atmosphere. Throughout human history, the stars have been crucial. They have contributed to calendar design, been employed in astrology star signs, been incorporated into religious rituals, and served as crucial navigational aids for early land and sea journeys.