SPACE: sun

 The sun:

    Our sun is a simple star. Like any other star, it is a gigantic ball of brilliant hydrogen. The source of its energy comes from a central core where the temperature peaks at 15 million degrees. A pinhead of this heat would burn within a 100 km radius. Its nucleus looks like a nuclear bomb that would explode continuously, but bigger, transforming 4 million tons of hydrogen into pure heat and light for a second. However, the gas around the core absorbs this energy that overflows the molten surface, where light and heat radiate into space.

Sunspots:

    Dark spots continually come and go on the surface of the Sun. These sunspots are dark because they are a few thousand degrees colder than the gases around them. So, by studying the movements of these sunspots, astronomers conclude that the equatorial axis of the Sun rotates faster than its poles.

CROWN of the sun:

    The thin atmosphere of the Sun is the crown. It extends millions of kilometres into space. Indeed, the surface of the Sun is a million times brighter than the crown, which is warmer by millions of degrees. And no one knows why. Gas escapes from holes that appear in the crown and fuse into space at more than 3 million (km/h).

The solar storms:

    Gases from the Sun are called "plasma" by scientists. During a storm, gigantic plasma bubbles are ejected out of the crown. the photographs on the left highlight a burst bubble in a few minutes. Sometimes the gust waves of a solar storm head directly to Earth. Our atmosphere protects us from the worst effects of these phenomena although some solar storms can destroy satellites or overload power lines, causing power outages.

The arches of fire:

    Huge plasma arches spring out hundreds of thousands of kilometres from the Sun and end up suspended in space for several months. The largest arch ever recorded had a dimension greater than the distance from Earth to the Moon. These arches, also called solar protuberances, follow the magnetic field of the Sun; and sometimes they drift and propagate millions of tons of plasma into space.