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:
“Blows the wind to-day, and the sun and the rain are flying,
Blows the wind on the moors to-day and now,
Where about the graves of the martyrs the whaups are crying,
My heart remembers how!”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“We laugh at him who steps out of his room at the very moment when the sun steps out, and says: “I will the sun to rise”; and at him who cannot stop the wheel, and says: “I will it to roll”; and at him who is taken down in a wrestling match, and says: “I lie here, but I will that I lie here!” And yet, all laughter aside, do we ever do anything other than one of these three things when we use the expression, “I will”?”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Our life runs down in sending up the clock.
The brook runs down in sending up our life.
The sun runs down in sending up the brook.
And there is something sending up the sun.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)