Abstract
Since time immemorial, people have stared in wonder at the sky. In addition to the familiar, twinkling stars, observers noted seven objects that moved with varying speeds against the background of ‘fixed’ stars. In order of greatest apparent brightness, they were the Sun, Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury and Saturn. The ancient Greeks called them “planetes” (“wandering stars”), a designation we still use for all but the Sun and Moon.
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Notes
- 1.
The longest total eclipse of the 21st century, which took place over Asia on 22 July 2009, lasted a maximum of 6 minutes 39 seconds. This duration will not be exceeded until 2132.
- 2.
The corona is not usually visible in daylight because its luminosity is only about one millionth that of the photosphere.
- 3.
Annular comes from annulus, the Latin word for “ring”.
- 4.
A micron is another term for a micrometer, or one millionth of a meter. This is often abbreviated as 1 μm.
- 5.
Cosmic rays are extremely energetic particles that are produced throughout the universe by violent astrophysical events such as supernovas and collisions of neutron stars.
- 6.
Magnetic field lines pointing out of the Sun have positive magnetic polarity, while inward-directed lines have negative polarity.
- 7.
There are two other p-p reactions that are not described here.
- 8.
Not to be confused with a black hole.
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Bond, P. (2022). Getting To Know The Sun. In: Solar Surveyors. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98788-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98788-6_1
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