The Sun and the Stars
By: Sue Peterson

The Sun is more than 4½ billion years old.

                           That would be too many candles to put on a birthday cake!

       There are sun spots on the surface of the Sun.

These spots were made from the heat that comes up from the middle of the Sun.

The middle of the Sun is called the core. It is very hot.

The Sun’s core can reach over 10 million degrees Fahrenheit. 

Your body temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit.

In comparison, you can see that the Sun is very,very hot.

The Sun gives us light and heat. It is the center of our Solar System.

The Solar System is made up of the Sun,planets, moons, asteroid belt,

comets, meteors and other objects. The Earth and other planets revolve

around the Sun.The Sun also gives out dangerous ultraviolet light which

causes sunburn and may cause cancer. You need to be careful of the Sun

and wear sunscreen and clothing to protect yourself from its rays.

Without the Sun, there would be only darkness and

our planet would very cold and be without liquid water.

Our planet would also be without people, animals, and plants

because these things need sunlight and water to live.

The Sun is as large across as putting 109 Earths next to each other.

It weighs as much as 330,000 Earths.

The Sun seems small when you look at it in the sky during the daytime,

in the morning when it comes up, and in the evening at sunset.

That is because the Sun is so far away.

It is 150 million miles away and it takes 8 minutes for the sunlight to reach us.

That means it takes 8 minutes for us to see the sunset after the Sun has already gone down.

The Sun is made up of gases: 75% hydrogen and 25%helium.

Hydrogen is the simplest and lightest of all of the known elements.

When you combine hydrogen with oxygen you get water. You probably know what helium is.

It is the gas that is put into balloons to make them stay in the air and float.Scientists study the Sun using special tools or instruments such as telescopes. They look at the amount of light from the Sun and the effect of the Sun’s light on the Earth’s climate. Stars are huge balls of glowing gas in the sky. 

     There are over 200 billion stars in the sky.

   The Sun is the star that is closest to us.  

     There are large stars which are 1000 times

larger than the Sun and
      small stars which are smaller than the Earth.

Stars look like tiny dots in the sky because their light

needs to travel through many layers of the Earth’s

atmosphere to reach us here on Earth.

The light of the star is bent many times through these layers

so it looks like the stars are twinkling.

That is why the words are written in the song: Twinkle, Twinkle,

Little Star. Stars have lifetimes of billions of years.

They are held together by their own gravity.

Over half of the stars in the sky are in groups of two.

They orbit around the same centerpoint and

they orbit across from each other.

There are larger groups of stars called clusters.

These clusters of stars make up galaxies. Our Solar System is located in the Milky Way Galaxy.