How does the sun keep burning?

•The heat from the sun is really important to us. If there was no sun there wouldn’t be

any life on earth.

The suns structure

The suns energy is generated in the core where it is so hot the temperature goes up to 15 million degrees celsius.

The suns surfaceWhat we think of the suns surface is called the photosphere. After thousands of years the energy released by nuclear reactions inside the sun finally bursts from the photosphere in a blaze of light. When Galileo first examined the sun with a telescope almost 4000 years ago he was amazed to find it’s bright surface speckled with dark markings. These sunspots are caused by magnetic fields inside the sun.

Inside the sunThe sun is 109 times the diameter of the earth and has a mass 745 times greater than that of all the planets in the solar system put together. The source of the suns heat is a nuclear furnace deep beneath it’s surface. It has been blazing for 4.6 billion years and will continue to burn for about the same time again.

suns atmosphereThe suns surface normally prevents us from seeing the faint thin solar atmosphere. Only during total eclipses when the moon passes directly in front of the sun is the atmosphere clearly visible from earth. The solar atmosphere consists of two main regions the chromosphere and the corona. These regions are often rocked by enormous eruptions and explosions called prominences and flares. For reasons astronomers do not fully understand the corona is hundreds of times hotter than the photosphere. As a result the suns atmosphere is evaporating into space at the rate of a million tonnes every seconed.

Conclusion

Scientists think that the source of the suns heat is a nuclear furnace deep beneath it’s surface.

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