The sun’s permanent position in the sky, as well as the fact that the Earth and other planets revolve around it, may give the impression that it is stationary and does not move or rotate.
However, we have been aware that the sun It has been going on since the seventeenth century. Like the majority of Solar Systemplanets, this rotation is counterclockwise, but in addition to being much slower than a landThe rotation of the Sun is much more complex.
How do we know that the sun is rotating?
The discovery of the sun’s rotation dates back to time Galileo GalileiAnd the to me British Library (Opens in a new tab). Along with many of his earlier contemporaries Astronomy scientistsGalileo noticed dark spots from the sun that we now call sunspots We understand that they are important parts of the solar cycle.
Galileo noticed something else, too. He found that these dark spots seemed to move, disappear and come back when he was observing the sun with his telescope.
In 1612, the first scientist wrote: “It is also clear that its rotation revolves around the Sun … To me, the probability of the motion seems to be more from the heliosphere than from its circumference,” according to the book. “Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo” (Opens in a new tab)(Doubleday, 1957).
Using sunspots, he discovered that the sun rotates, which is ironic given that these cold, dark spots on the surface of the sun are an artifact of this rotation.
To this day, astronomers and sun scientists use sunspots and other properties on the surface of our star to measure its rotation. However, there is more to learn about the rotation of the sun. In the first place, how different is it from the rotation of our planet.
Is the sun’s rotation different?
While Earth and the other inner planets are made up of solid rock, the Sun is a super-hot ball of dense ionized gas—mainly hydrogen and helium It’s called plasma.
This means that the way it rotates is different from the way our planet rotates. MarsAnd the VenusAnd the Mercury an act.
The Sun experiences something called differential rotation. This means that its rotation continues at different rates depending on where you look at the star.
“Since the sun is a gas/plasma ball, it doesn’t have to rotate as rigidly as the solid planets and moons,” to me (Opens in a new tab) NASA. “The source of this ‘differential rotation’ is the current area of research in solar astronomy.”
By moving from the sun’s poles to the equator, the time this region of plasma rotates shortens. The poles complete a rotation in 35 days, while the region above the equator completes a rotation in just 25 days. This means that no region of the Sun completes an orbit anywhere near as fast as our planet does.
However, the differences in rotation rates on our star are not isolated from its surface. The layers of the Sun’s interior also rotate at different speeds with the interior regions actually rotating like the solid bodies of the inner Solar System.
Astronomers estimate that the Sun’s core actually rotates as fast as once a week, four times faster than its surface and middle layers, according to NASA. Solar and Heliosphere Observatory (SOHO) page (Opens in a new tab). This has led solar scientists to intensively study the effects that arise from varying rates of rotation throughout our star.
This type of rotation is not unique to the Sun or even to stellar bodies. gas giants, Jupiter And the Saturn, also experiment with differential rotation. This is not surprising given their gaseous composition. ice giants Uranus And the Neptune It also has a differential spin – all spinning faster at the equator than at the poles.
Why does the sun rotate?
The counterclockwise rotation of the Sun and the counterclockwise rotation of the entire solar system (with the exception of two planets) is the result of its formation about 4.5 billion years ago.
At this point in UniverseIn history, the solar system has been nothing more than a giant rotating disk of gas and dust. NASA Science Propose (Opens in a new tab) An exploding star caused it to collapse into a solar nebula.
At the center of this nebula, we have the sun formed It comprises 99 percent of the available matter with the exoplanet-forming dust masses. But it included something else, too.
“The rotation of the Sun is due to the conservation of angular momentum,” National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) scientist Jeff Manjum said (Opens in a new tab). “What this means is that the gas cloud from which the Sun formed had some residual angular momentum passed to the Sun when it formed, giving the Sun the spin we observe today.”
Additional Resources
Find out how NASA and the European Space Agency search for the core of the Sun, including its rotation rate NASA’s SOHO Page (Opens in a new tab). Additionally, you can learn more about the solar system rule-breakers Venus and Uranus and their retrograde rotations in Science Alert موقع website (Opens in a new tab).
index
“Galileo’s Sunspot Letters (Opens in a new tab)British Library (2022).
“Solar rotation varies with latitude (Opens in a new tab)NASA (2013).
“Galileo’s discoveries and opinions (Opens in a new tab)(Doubleday, 1957).
“European Space Agency, US space agency SOHO unveil fast-spinning solar core (Opens in a new tab)NASA (2017).
Our Solar System. NASA Science, Exploring the Solar System (Opens in a new tab) (2021).
Why does the sun rotate? National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Opens in a new tab) (2020).
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