1. Falcon Focus What do you know about the sun?
What happens if you look at the sun for too long?

2. The Sun
The Sun

3. Sun Formation
4.6 billion years ago, the solar system was a cloud of gas, ice and dust
Cloud contracted into large tightly packed spinning disk, center was so hot and dense that nuclear fusion occurred: birth of our Sun

4. Characteristics of the Sun
99.8% of the mass of the solar system
No solid surface: ball of glowing gas
¾ of its mass is hydrogen and helium

5. Surface Features of the Sun
-Photosphere
-Corona

6. Outer Layers of the Sun
Photosphere: the inner layer of the sun; the part we see and the part that produces light
Corona: outermost layer, seen as a white halo around the sun during the middle of a solar eclipse

7. Layers of the Sun Diagram

8. Sunspots Areas of cooler gases in the photosphere
Cooler gases give off less light thus they appear darker then surrounding areas

9. Prominences Reddish loops of gas that link different
parts of sunspot regions
Produced in the Sun’s Photosphere

10. Solar Flares
Explosions of hydrogen gas from the sun’s surface that occur when loops (prominences) in sunspots suddenly connect
The radiation produce can interfere with Earth’s telecommunication systems, satellites and power grids

11. Surface Features of the Sun 1. Solar Winds
a stream of electrically charged particles produced by the Sun’s corona.
normally blocked by Earth’s atmosphere
Not blocked at the poles, enter causing glowing in rippling sheets: Auroras

12. Aurora Borealis
The sun gives off high-energy charged particles (also called ions) that travel out into space at speeds of 300 to 1200 kilometres per second. A cloud of such particles is called a plasma. The stream of plasma coming from the sun is known as the solar wind. As the solar wind interacts with the edge of the earth's magnetic field, some of the particles are trapped by it and they follow the lines of magnetic force down into the ionosphere, the section of the earth's atmosphere that extends from about 60 to 600 kilometres above the earth's surface. When the particles collide with the gases in the ionosphere they start to glow, producing the spectacle that we know as the auroras, northern and southern. The array of colors consists of red, green, blue and violet. 
                                        

13. Exit Ticket 12/2
What are solar flares?
What are sun spots?