THE 



NATURE-STUDY REVIEW 



Vol. 18 November, 1922 No. 8 



Our Own Sun and His Own Family 



A. B. Comstock 



We all love the sunshine, and we ought to, for it is the source of 

 all life in our beautiful world; but as the sun rises every morning 

 and sets every evening we grow accustomed to the sunshine with- 

 out giving any thought to the great orb from whence it comes. 



The sun is a vast ball of exploding, fuming gases, so hot that 

 its surface may be 15,000 degrees F. which is so much hotter than 

 any furnace heat we have on earth that we cannot even imagine it. 

 This heat from the sun is full of energy ; every square yard getting 

 the direct rays from the sun receives energy measured as "three 

 horse power," a horse power being measured as able to raise 33,000 

 pounds one foot high in one minute. 



This great hot ball, so brilliant that we cannot look at it without 

 hurting our eyes rotates on its axis in about 26 days and it rotates 

 in the same direction as does our earth. For all that we know, it 

 may be revolving around some far center as we revolve around it ; 

 we do know that it is moving through space toward the constella- 

 tion Lyra at the rate of nearly 800 miles per minute and is dragging 

 our earth and all the other planets along also at the same speed. 

 Often we see a dark spot on the sun's surface which when examined 

 with a telescope seems to have jagged margins: such spots usually 

 occur in groups and remain about two or three months but some- 

 times for only a day or so. These spots are supposed to be great 

 electric whirlpools; they do not move about, but each stays in its 

 own place as a hole in the earth would stay in the place where it 

 was made. 



The sun is 1 10 times as thick through as the earth and is so much 



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