What's The Sun Made Of? - Deep space high - Intergalactic weather watch

Right! We’re approaching Earth’s Sun to get a closer look at the source of all this solar weather. So visors on everyone – and let’s get the shields up. Uh… Quark… Why are you in your swimming costume? Well, I thought if we’re going to the sun I might do some sun bathing! You’ll be burned to a crisp! Now the first thing you’ve probably noticed is that the surface of the sun is a lot more active than it looks from Earth. It’s like a bubbling stew! Spitting and boiling so much it feels like it’s gonna shake the ship apart! The temperature here is over five thousand degrees Celsius – that’s FIFTY times the temperature of boiling water. Much quicker to make a cup of tea up here than on earth… Yeah. If you didn’t mind your kettle vaporising! Oh, I can see some cooler patches – are they the sun spots? Correct! Not much cooler though – still well over three thousand degrees. Shall we go in a little further? Now, this is where the action is! The sun is mostly made of two elements – hydrogen and helium. They are constantly bashing together and breaking apart and these collisions create energy – a LOT of energy! Yeah – fifty times as hot as boiling water! Um… not in here Sam! The thermometer says… fifteen MILLION degrees! Let’s not hang around too long - I don’t think we need to work on our tans much more! Sir, we’ve been learning that solar flares and solar wind are created by magnetic forces. But where exactly does the magnetism come from? Is it the same as all that heat energy? Not quite. The sun is made up of plasma – that’s a gas like state containing particles which have been blasted into pieces. Each piece has a magnetic charge – either positive or negative. All the tiny pieces moving around create a swirling ball of magnetic fields – constantly changing. Now we can’t see these fields without the help of some models – check this out! So, you can see in some areas there is less activity - and in other areas more. And when there’s a build up… Woah! That’ll be a solar flare! That’s right. And sometimes there’s a very big build up and you get something even bigger. Often after a large solar flare in fact. Hey! I remember! They’re called Coronal Mass Ejection! Um… if there’s just been a large flare… shouldn’t we… like… get a bit further away, Sir? Hold up! If my calculations are right I think we can expect a nice big Coronal Mass Ejection in… three… two… one… Hee hee! Hold on tight! Fortunately for us DSH is very well protected against the solar energy. Next time we’ll be finding out that not everyone who travels up here is as well protected. Class dismissed!