| The Sun is a star. You may have read that
it is a typical star. Not so! The Sun is actually a rather
rare star, as stars go. It radiates more energy (light and heat)
than 99% of the stars in space! This may be hard to believe because
most of the stars you can actually see in the sky at night are indeed far
more luminous than the Sun. It's just that most stars are much fainter
than the Sun and can't be seen without a large telescope.
What is a star? Well, most stars are huge
balls of hot luminous gas held together by gravity. They are gas
throughout. There is nothing solid in the Sun.
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Our star, the Sun, is huge. Its diameter is about
100 times the diameter of the Earth.
Even though the Sun is gas throughout, photographs of
the Sun seem to show a surface. This apparent bright surface is called
the photosphere. It's the place where the light from the Sun
appears to originate.
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