Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields. It has a diameter of about 1,392,684 km, about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass (about 2×1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Chemically, about three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, while the rest is mostly helium. The remainder (1.69%, which nonetheless equals 5,628 times the mass of Earth) consists of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron, among others.
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Famous quotes containing the word sun:
““When the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire somewhat like a guinea?” O no, no, I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host crying “Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty.””
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“Nor shall you scare us with talk of the
death of the race.
How should we dream of this place without us?—
The sun mere fire, the leaves untroubled about us,
A stone look on the stone’s face?”
—Richard Wilbur (b. 1921)
“I tell you there isn’t a thing under the sun that needs to be done at all, but what a man can do better than a woman, unless it’s bearing children, and they do that in a poor make-shift way; it had better ha’ been left to the men.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)