Sunny Stuff/The SFR Brigade Midsummer Blog Hop

The closest I came to anything “midsummer” growing up was Shakespeare. And back then, I didn’t know why it made them all bat crap crazy. My experiences with the sun were limited to burns from, and being told not to look into the sun or I’ll go blind (unlike some things I was told as a child, this is actually true). I think I knew the Solstice was the longest day of the year, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

Photo from NASA

What we sometimes forget is that it is only longer in our hemisphere. So while those of us in Northern Hemisphere are celebrating Summer, our Southern friends are celebrating Winter.

Since this blog hop is Global, I thought I’d make this post about the sun.

Here are some fun facts about the sun:

1. The Sun is windy. Okay, not exactly windy. It is particle-y, “they” (who are they anyway? who is the boss of what things get called?) just call it a Solar Wind.

2. Without the Sun we’d be toast (and sometimes the Sun toasts us).

3. A million+ Earths can fit on the Sun.

4. 55% of Americans know that the sun is a star. (I might have been one of the 45%, except now I’m not, cause I know.)

5. Our Sun has an expected life span of 11 billion years and if we see it go out, it will have happened eight minutes ago (time it takes light to travel from sun to us.)

Enough facts, already! Because I have a 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica I thought it might be fun to peek into the Sun’s past.

SUN; the name of the central body (hmmm, sounds like they didn’t know it was a star either, but then I read further and they write, “IF we regard the sun as a star…) of the solar system, the luminous orb from which the earth receives light and heat…

I’d trust this device… (photo from tfcbook.com)

Oh wow, here is something to make your head explode: “The first adequate determination of the character as well as amount of solar radiation was made by S. P. Langley in 1893…with the bolometer, an exceedingly sensitive instrument which he invented and which enabled him to feel his way thermally over the whole spectrum, noting all the chief Fraunhofer lines and bands…”

Okay, have to stop cause my eye is twitching, but you get the idea, don’t you? Tell me you do, cause my eye is twitching…

I thought Langley might have been bragging a bit, but when I looked up bolometer in Merriam-Webster, I found, wait for it…

bo-lom-e-ter: a very sensitive thermometer used in the detection and measurement of feeble thermal radiation and especially adapted to the study of infrared spectra…

I’m going to close with some historical comparisons with the present and end this sun madness!

1921 – Distance from earth: 92, 830,000 km (oops)

2012 – Distance from earth: 149.6 million kilometers (depending on earth’s movement)

1921 – Diameter of sun: 864 km (bigger oops)

2012 – Diameter of sun: 1,390,426 km

Pontiac Solstice – just for fun! (Photo from myride.com)

If you’d like more information about the sun, check out Wikipedia. And feel free to check my math. I decided to stop doing it when my eyes started to bleed.

Britannica does offer this disclaimer about their sun facts: Nearly all the chief data respecting the sun have lately been and still are under active investigation.

I hope you enjoyed this look at the sun (but not INTO the sun). Is there something you thought you knew, but turned out you didn’t? Planning anything fun for the longest (or shortest) day of the year?

In addition to a fun drawing if you follow the hop, people who comment on any blog post in June, get entered in drawing for an AnaBanana Gift Card ($10). Be sure to check out her site for a look at the yummies(and don’t miss the zombie soaps!)

All comments from all June blogs will count as entries. Winner will be announced in the July 2, 2012 blog post. Check back to see who won!

Perilously,

Pauline

Pauline Baird Jones is the author novels, some which play ducks and drakes with the facts. Her latest book is called Kicking Ashe, a science fiction romance novel and the conclusion to her award-winning Project Enterprise series of connected novels. You can learn more about the series and her other novels at www.paulinebjones.com