THE MAGNIFICENT SUN
The sun; a giant, glowing ball of gas some 850,000 miles in diameter . The temperature at its surface is over 11,000 F ., hot enough to vaporize any material known to man. Deep within the sun, the temperature rises to over twenty million degrees, a heat we cannot begin to imagine or comprehend. The sun dominates our solar system, containing more than 99% of the system’s matter. The sun is a thousand times as massive as Jupiter, the largest planet, and 335 , 000 times as massive as the earth. And if the sun were hollow, 1,300,000 earths could be fitted inside! In short, the sun is immense; it is the unquestioned center of the solar system. And yet, when compared with other stars, the sun is nothing more than average. There are stars a dozen times as massive as the sun, and others but a tenth as large. There are stars that outshine our sun 50,000 times over, and others just a hundredth as bright. In fact, the sun is a very middli