Let's face it, everybody likes a good blast that damages nothing important - and apparently God does too - because His fire-crackers are as far above ours as the stars are above the glow-worms...

This thread of nuggets is simply to show some of biggest things God has made - although they are mostly so far away, we haven't had a chance to see them until the last few decades...

/Bevin

Not so far away, but hidden by the brightness of the sun, are the sunspots.

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/robin.scagell/sunspots/pst_doublestack.htm

Just how hot is the surface of the sun away?

It's been a few years, but as I recall, the surface of the sun is around 10,000 deg. F. It gets much hotter closer to the core.

Good recall, David!

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/compare/comparison.html



(5800K + 273) * 9/5 = about 11000 F

The sun isn't exactly a placid place - here are some great time-lapse videos of its surface...

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mpeg/

/Bevin

{pedantic git}(5800-273)* 9/5 + 32 = a touch under 10000 F{/pedantic git}

(because K starts at absolute zero so you have to subtract 273 to get it to Celsius)

still pretty warm, though ;)

I'll use my favorite teacher-excuse

"I put it in there on purpose to see if anyone noticed"

Of course, that ain't true - but it sounds good!

/Bevin

Those time lapse movies of the sun are amazing; it looks like one bon-fire against another.

The temperature of the surface was estimated in the late 1700's by William Herschel - and he got it right to within 10% of so! It is a fascinating experiment. He simply timed a sheet of ice melting in the noon-day sun, imagined the sheet as part of a huge sphere the same thickness surrounding the sun, shrunk the sphere without changing its mass to sit on the sun's surface - so it was now a lot thicker, and used known physics to determine how hot the surface must be to melt that much ice that quickly!

The surface erupts in huge flares, like these ones...

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/2003_11_04/

which throw material far into space - indeed way beyond the Earth's orbit...

The Earth is, of course, quite a long way from the Sun - how far?

/Bevin

"Three light-minutes" seems to blaze up into my memory. ¿About 33.48 million miles?