the Sun

                                    The Sun  

The Sun:

The sun is a star, a hot ball of glowing gases at the heart of our solar system. Its influence extends far beyond the orbits of distant Neptune and Pluto. Without the sun's intense energy and heat, there would be no life on Earth. And though it is special to us, there are billions of stars like our sun scattered across the Milky Way galaxy. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, the Earth would be the size of a U.S. nickel. The temperature at the sun's core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit.

Average diameter: 864,000 miles, about 109 times the size of the Earth.

Rotation period at equator: About 27 days.

Rotation period at poles: About 36 days.

Surface temperature: 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Composition: Hydrogen, helium.

Name and etymology

The English proper name Sun developed from Old English sunne and may be related to south. Cognates to English sun appear in other Germanic languages, including Old Frisian sunne, sonne, Old Saxon sunna, Middle Dutch sonne, modern Dutch zon, Old High Germansunna, modern German Sonne, Old Norse sunna, and Gothic sunnō. All Germanic terms for the Sun stem from Proto-Germanic *sunnōn.^[19][20]

Religious aspects

Main article: Solar deity

Solar deities and Sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms, including the Egyptian Ra, the Hindu Surya, the Japanese Amaterasu, the Germanic Sól, and the Aztec Tonatiuh, among others.

From at least the 4th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the Sun was worshipped as the god Ra, portrayed as a falcon-headed divinity surmounted by the solar disk, and surrounded by a serpent. In the New Empire period, the Sun became identified with the dung beetle, whose spherical ball of dung was identified with the Sun. In the form of the Sun disc Aten, the Sun had a brief resurgence during the Amarna Period when it again became the preeminent, if not only, divinity for the Pharaoh Akhenaton.^[26][27]

The Sun is viewed as a goddess in Germanic paganism, Sól/Sunna.^[20] Scholars theorize that the Sun, as a Germanic goddess, may represent an extension of an earlier Proto-Indo-European Sun deity because of Indo-European linguistic connections between Old Norse Sól, Sanskrit Surya, Gaulish Sulis, Lithuanian Saulė, and Slavic Solntse.^[20]