The Sun, the centre of the Solar System is our star which is a huge ball of very hot gas . Its diameter is over 100 times more than the Earth’s diameter. Its surface is 60 times as hot as boiling water. The temperature at its centre is around 15 million degree C, and the heat flows outwards in all directions to the surface.

Sun gives us energy, warmth and light. The Sun is a star. Our nearest star is the Sun. Sun is a very small star. Millions of other stars are much bigger than the Sun.

The coolest spot on the sun is the dark eye of a spot. Sunspots appear where bundles of magnetic field lines punch through the photosphere (the surface 5700 degree C) and slow the rise of heat. Sunspot usually form in pairs; the largest seen here can swallow earth.

As you move away from the sun, the temperature begins to soar in a region called chromosphere. This is visible from the earth as a thin red band. Temperature continues to climb in the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona. Coronal heat likely comes from complex actions in magnetic field lines that rise above the surface. The temperature rises up to 2 million degree C when there in an interaction of the sun’s magnetic fields and its electrified gases. These are studied with satellite called TRACE.

The sun’s core is a thermo nuclear reactor, fusing hydrogen into helium. Because of the intense heat, these gases exist in an electrified state of matter called plasma. It takes hundred of thousands of years for the light to cross the dense interior to the convection zone, where plasma then bubbles to the surface.

All the nine planets including our earth moves round and round the sun .The sun holds its family of the planets near it by the pull of gravity. Gravity is the force that attracts objects and makes things fall to the ground when you drop them. The sun, the earth and other planets with their moons all have their own gravity attracting with different strengths. The gravitational pull on the planets by each other and by the sun keeps them all where they are.

The Sun and its planets are called the Solar System. The word solar means belonging to the Sun. We could not live without the heat and light that the sun gives us.