Talk:Sun

SUN

SUN

Sol vs. Sun

Should our sun, the star of our solar system, be called Sol instead of Sun? Sol is the common name for our star; "the sun" is 'that shiny object in the sky that gives us light and warmth'. On a planet of any other star system, I believe they would also point to their light-giving sphere and call it "the sun", even if the star is, say, Sirius A.

I would like to see this Sun wiki page linked to or moved to the wiki page Sol -- or at least the astronomical data of the star I think should be moved to wiki page Sol. Historical and cultural and etc data can remain here on the Sun page.

tl;dr: Sol is the scientific and astronomical name for our star -- much like Sirius, Rigel, etc have names. "The sun" is the common term for "light-giving sphere in the sky", which can be the case on any planet. It is not the name of our star. This page should be moved/updated accordingly.

Sources/References/Relevant:

1. ninjawords.com: (One) definition of "sun": (n) "A star, especially when seen as the centre of any single solar system."
2. wikipedia.org/Sun: "The Latin name for the star, Sol, is widely known but is not common in general English language use; the adjectival form is the related word solar."
3. wikipedia.org/Sol: "Typically used in science fiction and other contexts where the author wants to distinguish our particular star or the Solar System from "a sun" or "a planetary system""
4. earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-suns-name: "Bottom line: Our sun doesn’t have an official proper name, according to the International Astronomical Union. In antiquity, the names Sol and Helios referred to ancient sun gods and perhaps the sun itself."

Elaborating from Reference #4 above, there currently is no official name -- which is why I'm coming to wikipedia to try and encourage the use of Sol as the official name, because, as I explained above, I think it is a more practical name for both astronomy and the English language.

What does everyone else think? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kamkila (talk • contribs) 14:49, 18 May 2013 (UTC)

Though I can understand and in fact somewhat agree with your logic, per the WP:FORUM policy "Wikipedia is not a place to publish your own thoughts and analyses or to publish new information". WP:UCN gives that since Sol is equally unofficial as Sun but also far less commonly used in nearly all contexts, the page can't be moved/split. Reatlas (talk) 10:17, 19 May 2013 (UTC)

Much like the word god is capitalized when referring to a specific diety, the word sun implies and is used to describe any star with planets while "Sun" or "the Sun" refers specifically to our star. The word Sol could then also be defined. I feel this should be clarified at the top of the article and/or included in the disambiguation section. I don't feel qualified to edit this page so I will leave it to someone who is. Jellyneck (talk) 20:44, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

The word "sol" has other meanings. It is used to refer to the rotation periods, relative to the Sun, of planets other than the Earth. For example. NASA's press releases about the rovers on the surface of Mars say that a rover did something on Sol number X, where X is the number of sols that have elapsed since the rover landed. DOwenWilliams (talk) 21:01, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Characteristics: Poor expression

Existing sentence: "The photosphere is the last visible layer as those above it are too cool or too thin to radiate a significant amount of light to be visible to the naked eye"

Propose replacing the word "significant" with "sufficient" so the sentence will read: "The photosphere is the last visible layer as those above it are too cool or too thin to radiate a sufficient amount of light to be visible to the naked eye"

Additionally, the phrase "visible to the naked eye" is ambiguous. I suspect that this is referring to what can be observed at visible wavelengths. If so, the sentence should say that and should be further changed to read: "The photosphere is the last visible layer as those above it are too cool or too thin to radiate a sufficient amount of light to be observable in light at wavelengths visible to humans"

TerribleTadpole (talk) 00:31, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

With this edit, I changed "significant" to "sufficient". I don't really feel that "visible to the naked eye" is ambiguous, and I don't think we need to get as elaborate as your suggestion. The term naked eye is wikilinked in the article, so in the (in my opinion) unlikely event a reader thinks it means something else, or doesn't understand it, one click takes them to an explanation which begins: "The naked eye is a figure of speech referring to human visual perception unaided by a magnifying or light-collecting optical device". That all seems fine to me. Thanks for pointing out the error, and I love your username. Happy editing. Begoon ^talk 02:01, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

And further improved by User:DOwenWilliams, here:[1]. Thanks again for drawing attention to the inconsistency. Begoon ^talk 03:37, 31 May 2013 (UTC)

"However, before and after this spell as a stable star burning hydrogen in its core, a star is a very different object."

I can't tell if this statement is trying to sound like a textbook or what. It makes no sense. RocketLauncher2 (talk) 09:52, 5 June 2013 (UTC)

Convective zone

At the end of the first paragraph of section Convective zone it says: "At the photosphere, the temperature has dropped two 5,700 K and the density two only 0.2 g/m3 (about 1/6, 000th the density of air at sea level).[48 ]". But the source says, "At the visible surface the temperature has dropped two 5,700 K and the density is only 0.0000002 gm/cm3 (about 1/10, 000th the density of air at sea level)" [2]. 84.202.218.13 (talk) 10:26, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

The two densities are identical, so I assume what you don't like is the comparison to air. The density of air is 1.225 kg/m3, which is 6125 times less than 0.2 g/m3. This factor can be rounded to 6000 or to 10000, depending on what precision you want. Given the uncertainty in the Sun's density, it might be best to say "four orders of magnitude less than..." so people don't mistake the factor for an exact number. On the other hand there might be readers who are not familiar with "orders of magnitude". — HHHIPPO 11:56, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Death of the Sun -> Envelops Mercury's Iron core -> Supernova?

With the planet Mercury having a large iron core and being the closest planet to the Sun, will our star supernova, or proceed directly to a white dwarf, soon after it envelops the planet Mercury in a few million years? I would think that as soon as the iron and nickel from Mercury is incorporated into the Sun it will quickly migrate to the core of the star, due to it's density, and interrupt the exothermic fusion process through photodisintegration or some other mechanism. In summary, will the endothermic nature of iron and nickel halt the helium fusion chain reaction, and if so, what happens next? --NJB (talk) 13:35, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Mercury is a speck of dust compared with the Sun. While less than one percent of the mass of the Sun consists of heavy elements such as iron and nickel, this is still hundreds or thousands of times more than the total mass of Mercury. When Mercury is absorbed by the sun (billions of years from now), it will increase the mass of nickel and iron in the star by much less than one percent. Will this make a significant change to the nuclear reactions in its core? I doubt it. DOwenWilliams (talk) 04:26, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Change first sentence of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun to read:

Sun, or Sól, is the de facto proper name given to the star at the center of our Solar System. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.93.12.165 (talk) 03:50, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

 Not done Unsourced. Tbhotch.^™ Grammatically incorrect? Correct it! See terms and conditions. 06:10, 24 June 2013 (UTC)

Math error

In the article entitled "Sun" it states that the sun is roughly 150 million kilometers from Earth (1.5 billion meters). Later in the same article it states that light from the sun takes about eight minutes to get to Earth. Since the speed of light is roughly 300 million meters per second, either light must reach the earth in five minutes, or the distance to the sun averages 2.4 billion meters. I understand that the distance to the sun varies throughout the orbital period of the Earth, but these two statements are not mathematically coherent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wtchdrmd (talk • contribs) 16:55, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

There are two errors in your calculation: 150 million km are 150 billion m, not 1.5 billion m, and you forgot to convert from seconds to minutes. Try again ;-) — HHHIPPO 17:42, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Thank you - foolish errors, and I am appropriately embarrassed. The numbers now work as stated in the article.