Jakarta –
Not a planet Sun classified as a star, why yes? The sun is described as a 4.5 billion year old yellow dwarf star at the center of our solar system.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) explains that the Sun has a type of G2V star which is a yellow dwarf main sequence star. The sun is the largest object in our solar system.
It also has the designation of a true star because it can emit its own light. In addition, the light that emanated from Sun never goes out. But it turns out that the discovery of the Sun is a star has been studied since 450 BC by Anaxagoras. Here’s the full explanation!
Sun: Definition, Size and Distance to Formation
NASA is on the site Solar System Exploration explains the Sun has many names and designations. The Latin word for the Sun is “Sol” which is the main adjective of all things related to the Sun.
Our sun is a medium-sized star with a radius of about 435,000 miles (700,000 kilometers). When calculated from Earth, the Sun is about 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).
One fact that states why the Sun is a star and not a planet because it has no moon. But the planets and moons in the Milky Way Galaxy orbit the Sun.
Speaking of its formation, the Sun formed about 4.6 billion years ago in a giant rotating cloud of gas and dust called the solar nebula. As the nebula collapses under its own gravity, it spins faster and flattens into a disk.
Most of the nebula’s material was pulled toward the center to form our Sun, which makes up 99.8% of the mass of our solar system. Because of a star, the Sun will have time to run out of energy.
As it begins to die, the Sun will expand into a red giant star, becoming so large that it will engulf Mercury and Venus, and possibly Earth as well. Scientists predict the Sun is a little less than half its life and will last about another 5 billion years before becoming a white dwarf.
Proving the Sun is a Star
Before Christ
As mentioned earlier, proving the Sun is a star has been done since 450 BC by Anaxagoras. According to Stanford University’s Solar Center page, Anaxagoras was someone who lived in Athens, Greece around 450 BC.
He is credited with being the first person to state that the Sun is a star. But unfortunately, his explanation was not met with full disapproval. Because full of criticism Anaxagoras was imprisoned for impiety.
Various ideas about the Sun as a star were propounded by many after Anaxagoras, but they always ended sadistically. About 1800 years later, around AD 1590, Giordano Bruno suggested the same thing, and was burned at the stake for it.
Pre-Proof Time
Until finally the explanation about the Sun is a star began to be clarified during the time of Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Isaac Newton to Friedrich Bessel. Galileo Galilei was an Italian scientist who in 1610 used his newly invented telescope to view stars and planets.
Galilei put forward the Copernican heliocentric model. He noticed that the stars looked like tiny dots even when viewed through a telescope, and concluded that the stars were indeed very far away.
However, he was forced to publicly refute Copernicus’ ideas, and was kept under house arrest until he died in 1642. Unfortunately at that time Galileo also had no proof that the Sun and stars were the same.
Galileo’s struggle was like being continued by Johannes Kepler, who studied the positions of the planets very carefully. Until finally he determined the Law of planetary motion which firmly placed the Sun at the center of the solar system with the planets orbiting the Sun.
The discovery is like proving that the Sun is not a planet, although why the laws of motion of this planet should be that way is still unclear.
Proof Time
In 1665, Isaac Newton realized that gravity was what held the solar system together. This thought popped into Newton’s head when an apple fell on his head while he was sitting under an apple tree, observing the Moon.
Newton then determined a formula that described how gravity worked. He also explained that the orbits and motion of the planets are around the sun and the moon around the planet. Hence Kepler’s three Laws of planetary motion.
The motion of the planets and the moon is now explained by one formula, namely Newton’s Law of Gravity. People speculate that these same laws may apply throughout the universe.
Until finally in 1838, Friedrich Bessel became the first person to measure the distance of a star without any assumptions about the nature of the star and found it very large. The distance to other stars soon followed, and then one could calculate the true brightness of the star, correct for the distance and find the star to be as bright as the Sun.
Various properties of the Sun were also found to be similar to those of stars, such as its surface temperature and chemical composition. Thus we can be sure that the Sun is a star.
Well that’s the explanation why Sun can be classified as a star. So you know more detikers!
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