Sun - the shining star

22 October, 2012

My morning gaze of Sun slides me into reflective mood of how shrouded we are in the mystery of life. I am shockingly amazed the very light and energy field of Sun. The more I read about Sun, the deeper will be my reverence. I bow my head to this daily wonder so as to be more pious.

MY DAILY ritual includes praying to Sun God in the morning. In fact Sun is the living mystery right in front of us. Without His rays, no living species would survive and the Earth would freeze into an ice ball. Though we made some progress in knowing other stars in the solar system, the progress on Sun is tardy.

When I talk about Sun, I am reminiscent of a Sun temple in my native Andhra Pradesh, India called Arasavalli Sun God temple situated in the coastal district of Srikakulam. It is one of the ancient Sun God temples in the country. The beauty of the temple structure is such that sunrays fall on the feet of the idol twice in the year in the months of March and September in the early hours of the day. This ancient temple is believed to have been built in the later half of the 7th century by Devendra Verma, the Ruler of the Kalinga Kingdom.

The more I started knowing about Sun, the greater I become submissive to that power. Sometimes even I contemplate the idea of re-writing these subjects for my children to give greater insights so as to keep their learning curve intact.

The other day I read in a newspaper that a group of scientists from Hawaii, Brazil and California has measured the diameter of the Sun with unprecedented accuracy by using a spacecraft to time the transits of the planet Mercury across the face of the sun in 2003 and 2006. They measured the Sun's radius as 696, 342 km with an uncertainty of only 65 km.

The gigantic ball of spinning gas is about 5 billion years old. The base material is Hydrogen (71 %), Helium (26.5%) and other elements (2.5%). The nuclei of hydrogen collide and fuse to form helium and this chain reaction produces energy, which among other things, lights and heats the solar system.

Scientists estimate that the mean distance from the Earth to the Sun is about 150 million km. If translated into flying hours it means that a jet aircraft with 1000 km/hr would need more than 17 years of non-stop flying to reach the Sun.

Johannes Kepler, the German astronomer (1571-1630) produced the first accurate model of the solar system. Much of the present knowledge of the nature of stars owes to an English astronomer, Arthur Eddington (1882-1944). I feel that the mystery of Sun is no different from mystery of Universe. It appears that deeper aspects of life and origin of Universe are beyond the realm of human comprehension. We can't be able to connect dots and what Arthur Eddington said to the world 84 years ago. (The Nature of The Physical World (1928) 291) still holds good: Something unknown is doing we don't know what. So the home point is, we are part of that mystery!