Talk:Sun

SUN

SUN

"with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process."

Except that internal motion has been measured and found to be 100 times less than that required to produce those dynamo effects and support magnetic reconnection or heat transfer theories. http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.3173

So why again are we still making that claim???? Steven J White (talk) 14:51, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

No "claims" are being made. What is being summarized is standard Babcock–Leighton theory, and every solar dynamo talk I've ever attended assumes this theory. While there might be some scientists that don't believe this, since we are writing an encyclopedia, it is important to stick with convention. Having said that, it isn't obvious to me that the paper you cite presents a problem for this theory, but I'm happy to have this more explicitly explained to me. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 15:04, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The Sun's Brightness

The sun has an apparent magnitude of -26.74. It should be added to this article that the apparent magnitude of the sun converts to 98,000 lux.

Color

The sun is white. This is mentioned in the article. But the picture is orange. Can we replace it with a true color picture so as not to perpetuate the myth of an orange sun? — DanielLC 23:59, 10 June 2014 (UTC)

I totally agree. There has been previous discussion about this on the infobox talk page (Template_talk:Solar_System_Infobox/Sun#Replaced_the_false_color_image_of_sun.) and here (Talk:Sun/Archive_6#True_color), but there was no consensus. Maybe this time though. Ulflund (talk) 01:24, 11 June 2014 (UTC)

Moderately agree. We have a source that we cite in the lead [1] saying the Sun is white, so unless there's a WP:RS saying the Sun is some other color, it's white, and so the infobox picture should be white. Furthermore, if you're floating in space and close enough to see it directly as a disk rather than a dot, it'll look white, correct? That said, I don't find the current infobox misleading; I don't know that anyone is really going to think the Sun is (tangerine?) orange and flecked with red and white dots and visible flares like in the current infobox picture, which quite clearly is not the Sun as we see it with our eyes. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 04:36, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

If we end up keeping the current image, we should at least caption it as being an extreme ultraviolet image; it's not obvious to a layman like me what part of the spectrum this is until I click through to the image template file. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 04:40, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

The sun is "white" because the sun defined "white" in your eyes. Does it not depend, where in the sky it is? So at sunset it is defiantly red. In space, it is defiantly too bright to see. Is red really such a bad choice? wouldn't black and white end up looking like the moon (on tv)?DarkShroom (talk) 01:12, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

btw further the sun is actually modelled as a black body, black bodies emit red light as they get up to temperature, they then go yellow and eventually white when your eyes are saturated, so yeah again i like red, especially since it is not something you'll ever look at anyway DarkShroom (talk) 01:21, 13 July 2014 (UTC)

At sunset the atmosphere filters out the most blue, making the sun look orangish. This is the time people are most likely to look at it, since the atmosphere is filtering out most of the light so it's relatively safe to look at. I assume this is why people think the sun is always that color. In general, it looks much whiter. The color the sun actually is, rather than what it appears to be after being filtered through an atmosphere, is pretty much white. In space, it can be safely seen from a sufficient distance, and would appear white. If you view it through a filter to make it look darker without changing the color, then it would appear white, or grey if you filter it more. "wouldn't black and white end up looking like the moon" It doesn't look much like the moon, but in any case, the point of a picture of the sun isn't to not look like the moon. The point is to look like the sun, which the current picture does not. — DanielLC 22:05, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

It seems like most people agree that an image of a white sun would be more appropriate. To make a change we need an alternative. How about this image?

I'll agree with DarkShroom's aesthetics, though not his physics. Now that I look at the picture, the white sun is indeed boring, which should be weighed against the other factors. If we keep it white: the sun is the brightest thing you usually see all day, I'd prefer something that somehow gets across its brightness. A reddish true-color image at sunset is fine too, if the picture makes it clear it's taken through the atmosphere. There's a reasonable tradeoff between typicalness (the sun's true color being white in space, or whiteish at noon) and aesthetical appeal of the sunset that could go either way. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 20:19, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

Reply to DarkShroom: A dark body turns white when it reaches the temperature of the sun because the emission spectrum gets shifted to low enough wavelengths, independently of whether your eyes get saturated. I don't buy the argument that since few people will look at the sun our image doesn't have to look like the sun. Ulflund (talk) 23:09, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Even if we don't put a true color picture in the infobox, can we at least put it somewhere on the page? I would expect one of the many pictures of the sun on the Wikipedia page for "sun" would show what the sun looks like. — DanielLC 18:06, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

According to this source, the sun is indeed white, although technically it is green because the sun's output is maximum in the green part of the spectrum. Indeed, the article already states "The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V) based on spectral class and it is informally designated as a yellow dwarf because its visible radiation is most intense in the yellow-green portion of the spectrum". I don't mind a picture of any color as long as the caption clarifies that point. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:46, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I agree that we should have a true color image of the sun, but it's not that easy to clarify the designation. The sun looks white and has its maximum output for green light, so it is designated a yellow dwarf. At the moment none of the many orange and yellow illustrations of the sun in this article clarifies that the sun actually looks white unless it is sunset or sunrise. Ulflund (talk) 02:46, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I went ahead and added the boring true-color image of the Sun under "observations and effects" and clarified the lede. Others can continue to change it if they want but I'm personally fine with where we are now. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 20:08, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Sigh. I guess people have forgotten what "white" means -- in the psycho-physics sense. White means "all colors" or "your eyes being overwhelmed by the brightness or presentation of all colors -- thus human eyes see it as white." It is a coincidence of having eyes of a particular design that our psychophysics experience of "red", "orange", "yellow" etc. map onto particular parts of the visible spectrum. So -- no -- the Sun is not *really* white any more than any large multi-wavelength emitter of visible light is "white".

That being said -- sure, it is interesting to know that from a space-based vantage point, human eyes would see the Sun as white.

But for Wikipedia purposes -- I think more emphasis should be made about the Sun's position on the Main Sequence -- which means that it is described as a yellow-ish white star. A yellow image seems very appropriate.

IMHO this insistence on "the Sun is WHITE -- not YELLOW" is more because someone found a funny fact that they want to push in the article. Sometimes the astrophysics folks forget that the psychophysics of human experience is important, too. Or to put it this way -- if aliens had different types of eyes, would they see the Sun as "white"? Likely not, if their eyes were more discerning than ours or didn't get overwhelmed at exactly the same points of brightness or luminosity. They might well say the "real" color of the Sun from a point in space was yellowish-green. Chesspride 66.19.84.2 (talk) 04:10, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

The sun is white. That is not a funny fact, but a true fact. If you look at it through a neutral density filter when it is high in the sky, or if you project it onto a paper through a small hole in a screen you will see it as white. White doesn't just mean all colors, it requires a balance between the different parts of the spectrum. That balance will depend on what illumination your eyes are adapted to. Under daylight conditions the sun is white, but under light bulb illumination the spectrum of the sun will look bluish white. Ulflund (talk) 14:30, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

"If you look at it --" Human perception of color, especially of white or near-white, is notoriously unreliable, especially where very bright objects are involved. The sun seen through an ND filter is still "very bright" in context, which is near-black everywhere else. "Through a small hole in a screen" isn't reliable either, because many "white" papers are not true white - whatever you mean by that. Furthermore many of them fluoresce blue in the sun's UV output. This normally is not perceptible in sunlight but it does lend a slight bluish cast to the perceived color of the sunlight. (This by the way is what "brighteners" in laundry products are doing - they add fluorescence.) Note also that While "daylight" (5600K) is one of many standards in color photography, the "daylight" that illuminates our outdoor scenes is a combination of direct rays from the sun plus the blue scattered light from the sky. The "color of the sun" that you see when looking at it (through an ND filter or with a pinhole camera or whatever) omits the latter, so it doesn't represent the sun's full output... etc., etc. So, no, "if you look at it" can't be relied on for much of anything here, except of course to describe the human experience. Jeh (talk) 00:44, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

Edit request- "faint young sun" section

Contrary to the above mentioned section in this article,(Sun#Faint_young_Sun_problem) there is actually NO consensus for the faint young sun paradox. The paper cited in this article is from 1986, since then a number of other papers have been published which categorically dispel the Greenhouse gas explanation.

Like this one published in Nature the journal in 2010 - Examination of Archaean sediments appears inconsistent with the hypothesis of high greenhouse concentrations. Instead, the moderate temperature range may be explained by a lower surface albedo brought about by less continental area and the "lack of biologically induced cloud condensation nuclei". This would have led to increased absorption of solar energy, thereby compensating for the lower solar output.

Use of the word "gas"

In several places the material of the sun is referred to as a gas. In one location it even links to the gas page, where gas is described as being something different from plasma. Surely these uses of the term gas should be replaced by something else, preferably "plasma". — Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.3.253.206 (talk • contribs) 23:42, 21 November 2014

In common parlance, "gas" can refer to any matter that tends to completely fill a 3D space, including plasma. However, an encyclopedia should strive to use these terms only in their technical definitions. I have fixed this. --JorisvS (talk) 11:04, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Simply their way of avoiding the forces active in plasma, by calling it a "neutral" gas. A gas it behaves nothing like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_%28physics%29

"The presence of a non-negligible number of charge carriers makes plasma electrically conductive so that it responds strongly to electromagnetic fields... Unlike gas, under the influence of a magnetic field, it may form structures such as filaments, beams and double layers.... When the charges move, they generate electrical currents with magnetic fields, and as a result, they are affected by each other’s fields."

So again, we need not consider mythical dynamos. And referring to it as a "gas" is totally misleading as to it's true behavior. Steven J White (talk) 14:56, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Steven, the word "gas" actually only appears a very few times in the article. Can you be specific as to where you think there is a problem? Thanks, Isambard Kingdom (talk) 15:11, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

The Lead contains details which should be moved to the body

The Lead contains details which should be moved to the body per WP:LEAD. And While it is tempting to include everything, it does not make a good read. All i see is technical scientific specs. The sun is more than that, yet none of the "more than that" is in the lead. Here is some random stuff that has no business in the lead: Because the Milky Way is moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in the direction of the constellation Hydra with a speed of 550 km/s, the Sun's resultant velocity with respect to the CMB is about 370 km/s in the direction of Crater or Leo, I mean that just fly over my head.--Inayity (talk) 03:05, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Soln: List by priority the most important aspects of the sun, and then make sure they are covered, everything else should move to the body. Cut down technical specs. I think the human/culture element is unrepresented and that is far greater than Lux values and what not.--Inayity (talk) 03:07, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

@Inayity: I totally agree with you. However, I don't think that deleting more than 1000 bytes in content is a good idea. It is better if you move the information to a different section in the article. I'll shorten the lead some more too, by the way Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 03:23, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

That information is already in the body.Actually some of it about the color is not. Which is actually a problem. Because why is something so texty in the lead but then not in the body? The lead should sum up the best parts of the body. If in lead it should be covered in body. --Inayity (talk) 03:29, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

All of this is can go

The Sun is currently traveling through the Local Interstellar Cloud (near to the G-cloud) in the Local Bubble zone, within the inner rim of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way. Of the 50 nearest stellar systems within 17 light-years from Earth (the closest being a red dwarf named Proxima Centauri at approximately 4.2 light-years away), the Sun ranks fourth in mass. The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way at a distance of approximately 24000–26000 light-years from the galactic center, completing one clockwise orbit, as viewed from the galactic north pole, in about 225–250 million years. Because the Milky Way is moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in the direction of the constellation Hydra with a speed of 550 km/s, the Sun's resultant velocity with respect to the CMB is about 370 km/s in the direction of Crater or Leo.

The mean distance of Earth from the Sun is approximately 1 astronomical unit (about 150,000,000 km; 93,000,000 mi) by definition, though the distance varies as Earth moves from perihelion in January to aphelion in July.--Inayity (talk) 03:28, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

calendar is important but no where in Article

I mean this is not even mentioned solar calendar I would think this matters more than G-Clouds. We really need to ask "What is the Sun" not only to scientist but to people who may need to read this article and get a better complete pic.--Inayity (talk) 03:50, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

• The solar calendar is based on the earth, not the sun. The length of a day and year are specified on the articles for each planet. — DanielLC 19:12, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Is this section LEAD material I think it is Body material (reply pls)

Of the 50 nearest stellar systems within 17 light-years from Earth (the closest being a red dwarf Proxima Centauri at approximately 4.2 light-years away), the Sun ranks fourth in mass.[19] The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way at a distance of approximately 24000–26000 light-years from the Galactic Center, completing one clockwise orbit, as viewed from the galactic north pole, in about 225–250 million years. Because the Milky Way is moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) in the direction of the constellation Hydra with a speed of 550 km/s, the Sun's resultant velocity with respect to the CMB is about 370 km/s in the direction of Crater or Leo.[20]--Inayity (talk) 12:00, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Inayity: I believe the lead is good as it is now. It is not as long as it used to be, so it is not necessary to move more content from there Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 12:29, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Not only about length, should also be about WP:LEAD, when the above material is placed in the lead, no matter how long or short, it is not a summary of the article. No lead should have in language like Because the Milky Way is moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) that is a very detailed explanation, not lead content. No lead should be explaining details about clockwise orbits. This material is coming at the expense of something more notable about the sun. And mass was already discussed, yet it is discussed again. Is there anything else about the sun the average reader would like to know? --Inayity (talk) 13:05, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

As a point read facts about the sun and see how many of these make it into this lead. The sun is Middle age, I think that is very important, yet other details come before this. --Inayity (talk) 13:11, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Please, add those things you think are missing. --JorisvS (talk) 13:16, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I rather not add too much as I am observing the page, It would be better for someone familiar with the topic to tell me if my observations are right or wrong, and also they would know the exact place to add say Middle Age. --Inayity (talk) 13:24, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I still say the lead is fine as it is right now Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 13:54, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Inayity: what do you think should be added to the lead? --JorisvS (talk) 13:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

While my focus right now is moving what i believe is excessive material I think info on the sun being Middle Age would be nice, just as I have already added info on the solar calendar and the centrality of the sun to life. (pretty big deal life). --Inayity (talk) 14:27, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Both you and I already moved lots of content from the lead. It is enough. Also, the sentence you quoted above "(Because the Milky Way is moving with respect to the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB)" is used to explain the velocity of the Sun in relation to the galaxy. It is ok. Tetra quark ^{(don't be shy)} 15:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Please read WP:LEAD, you not suppose to be explaining CMB and Milky way in the lead of the Sun in this detail. Why is that entire section in the LEAD in the first place?, why is it WP:NOTABLE, why does it have so much WP:WEIGHT for inclusion in the article intro. I cannot explain it more than this.--Inayity (talk) 16:55, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

@Inayity: In my opinion, the material you've highlighted above does not belong in the lead, it is too factoid, to quantitative, too detailed. It would be good material for the interior of the article, however. Thank you for your work on this lead. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 14:02, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I strongly agree, the material is not by any standards something that should be in a lead. It is not even written correctly to be in a lead. I see zero justification for why this sentence is in the lead. If someone disagrees we should specifically discuss why it should be in the lead.--Inayity (talk) 14:27, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

I also note that many astronomical pages have leads salted up with lots of quantitative factoids, usually, even, when there is right next to the lead on the right a summary table giving the very same quantitative values. Redundancy is not good, in general. Redundancy with two occurrences right next to each other is even worse. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 14:35, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

It is interesting to compare Sun with Star. In the latter, the lead has almost no numerical factoids, whereas in the former it is loaded with those. Not that Star is perfect, the lead there is also too long, but it does show that the lead for Sun would benefit from some thought about what is being written. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 01:16, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Failing a direct challenge to that specific material and why it is in the lead it should be removed. Our mission has to be better articles, with that detail in the lead it does not help readers. More comments from Wikipedia would be good (not only people with a scientific background). --Inayity (talk) 02:47, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Agree. In general remove quantitative material from lede-- that's primarily why we have INFOBOXs. Look at other articles on planets or even chemical elements to get the idea (Mars, hydrogen). The lead is for summarizing the article in a way which you'd do in explaining something informally to a friend, on a walk. Perhaps 5 paragraphs of 5 sentences each. The Sun is a middle-aged star, a little larger and hotter than the average for stars in our galaxy. is fine. That puts us in context. The details, at this point, are not fine. SBHarris 03:13, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Proposed additions to lead

The Sun was formed about 4.57 billion years ago from the collapse of part of a giant molecular cloud. The Sun is roughly middle age and has not changed dramatically for four billion years, and will remain fairly stable for four billion more. However after hydrogen fusion in its core has stopped, the Sun will undergo severe changes and start to turn into a red giant. It is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of the Solar System's inner planets, possibly including Earth. This can be integrated into the section of the lead covering this topic. --Inayity (talk) 06:38, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

Isambard Kingdom

Is it ok to remove content? All the 13 edits so far have a red change in bytes. The articles need to have a good readability; it is not necessary to simplify paragraphs that much to make them too straight to the point Tetra quark ^(talk) 18:23, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

Please see the talk page of administrator John concerning Tetra quark's complaint: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:John#one_last_thing

Isambard Kingdom (talk) 01:00, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

I asked John about the way you edit in general, not the edits themselves Tetra quark ^(talk) 01:28, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

As opposed to, say, the way you edit, with your many (many) small and often isolated edits to many (many) different pages? Isambard Kingdom (talk) 01:47, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

To me all the edits looks like improvements. Please keep improving Wikipedia. Ulflund (talk) 04:51, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

@Ulflund: Yes, they're not bad. I'd revert a thing or two but I want to avoid getting into trouble. Tetra quark ^(talk) 05:08, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

Good grief! Isambard Kingdom (talk) 09:52, 31 January 2015 (UTC)

Magnetism and activity

I just wanted to alert interested editors that I intend to work quite a bit on the (new section) entitled "Magnetism and activity". Previously, material in this section was dispersed across the article, making it hard to understand. So, work in progress. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 20:16, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Okay, possibly enough for today. I know that the first paragraph in this section needs integration with the paragraphs that follow. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 21:53, 3 February 2015 (UTC)

Capitalization of "sun"

User:JorisvS, what do you mean by your edit comment "it is, because it is the proper name of the star our planet orbits"? I had added the paragraph:

The word "sun" is normally not capitalized but takes the definite article: "the sun". However, the International Astronomical Union "formally recommends" capitalizing the word (as well as "Moon" and "Earth").

Are you saying "It is normally capitalized"? Well, that's certainly not true. Maybe certain people think it should normally be capitalized, but it's not normally capitalized. It doesn't matter whether we're talking about the star our planet orbits or the light in the sky. Those are the same thing. I object to having the word "sun" capitalized in this article, against normal usage. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 11:43, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Proper usage has it capitalized, simply because it is a proper noun, and English capitalizes proper nouns. Sure, a good number of people don't, but that's no reason to be sloppy. --JorisvS (talk) 11:51, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

You say it's a proper noun, but it's not really. (Nor is "the earth", "the ocean", etc.) It's not a question of sloppiness. The traditional way of spelling "sun" is with a small "s" (unless you go back a couple hundred years to the time when people would capitalize almost all the nouns in English, as the Germans still do). Anyway, if you're in favor of capitalizing it, then why did you delete my sentence saying that the IAU wants people to capitalize it? If this article is going to obey the diktat of the IAU instead of following normal usage, then there should at least be a sentence explaining why. Eric Kvaalen (talk) 12:14, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Oh, but it is: it is one specific star, just like Proxima Centauri is one specific star. Earth is one specific planet, just like Jupiter is one specific planet. In contrast, there are many oceans, e.g. the Atlantic, the Pacific, the Indian. --JorisvS (talk) 14:41, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

You can go back more than eleven hundred years to Ælfred (writing in Old English) and still see "sun" uncapitalised (" Ðonne seo sunne on hadrum heofone beorhtost scineð, þonne aðeostriaþ ealle steorran.") Milton uses a capital letter for "Sun", but then he does the same for "Sea". Wiktionary suggests that our particular star is a proper noun, but the OED gives no such indication, most of its cites being uncapitalised. Our Moon and Earth articles capitalise "Sun" so I suppose we ought to be consistent, even though many (most?) people don't use capital "S" in normal writing. Dbfirs 15:11, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

Capitalization rules are arbitrary social conventions ("summer" vs. "Paris"), but on Wikipedia, the Sun as an astronomical object should indeed be capitalized, per MOS:CELESTIALBODIES. If you disagree, feel free to bring it up on that talk page, preferably after reviewing the previous discussion there. Rolf H Nelson (talk) 06:35, 25 February 2015 (UTC)

Grammarist says that "Earth", "Moon" and "Sun" are capitalized when on their own, and lowercase when preceded by an article. Interestingly, it points out that only those astronomical objects are ever preceded by "the". You never refer to "the mars", for example. — DanielLC 19:21, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. After you change it to one convention, somebody will come along later and change it back to the other convention. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 19:59, 12 March 2015 (UTC)

Centrifugal vs gravitational effects at equator miscalculation?

I believe there may be a mistake in the section Sun#Characteristics in the line "The centrifugal effect of the Sun's rotation is 18 million times weaker than the surface gravity at the Sun's equator." This is equivalent to saying the ratio of centrifugal to gravitational acceleration is a_c/g = 1/(1.8x10⁷) ≈ 5.6x10^-8. However, my own calculation for the centrifugal acceleration at the photosphere and equator (based on solar data from the main page, e.g. equatorial rotational period of 25.05 days) yields a_c = ω²R ≈ (2.90x10^-6 rad/s)²⋅(6.96x10⁸ m) ≈ 5.85x10^-3 m/s², and thus a_c/g ≈ (5.85x10^-3 m/s²)/(274 m/s²) ≈ 2.1x10^-5. This differs from the stated value by over two orders of magnitude. Perhaps the article meant to read "The centrifugal effect of the Sun's rotation is only 18 millionths as strong as the surface gravity at the equator"? This would be close to the value of 21 millionths I'm coming up with. Thoughts?Marcosk496 (talk) 05:44, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Marcosk496, I'm not following you completely. You have one calculation that shows a contradiction, and another one that does not? Can you show the one that is close to right? Then, with respect to the sentence you are questioning, it is closely related to the subsequent sentence, which has a reference to a book by Schutz:

The centrifugal effect of the Sun's rotation is 18 million times weaker than the surface gravity at the Sun's equator. The tidal effect of the planets is even weaker and does not significantly affect the shape of the Sun.

Perhaps this reference could shed some light on this. More generally, if we are going to some numerical value quoted, then there needs to be a citation, otherwise I think we get into Wiki policy for not reporting original research. I don't have access to the book by Schutz. Maybe someone reading this does? Thanks for paying attention! Isambard Kingdom (talk) 14:43, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

This misinformation was added in this edit on 9 July 2004 and had nothing to do with the Schutz reference. Since it was wrong and unsourced, I removed it. Spacepotato (talk) 23:49, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Differences in observational data and solutions

Some scientists found that observational data and solutions through mathematics for the heat transfer from the center to outer parts. When plugging dark matter in equations problem can be resolved. For more information refer to website: [2] MansourJE (talk) 04:37, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Energy sources of Earth

"The only other source of energy Earth has are the fissionable materials generated by the cataclysmic death of another star"

[surely the Earth also has kinetic energy - the Earth & Moon exert tidal forces on each other & motions within the earth's metallic core associated with the earth's rotation generate a magnetic field and thereby a protective magnetosphere] — Preceding unsigned comment added by GusMcT (talk • contribs) 11:01, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. I've modified the sentence appropriately. The rotational energy of the earth-moon system does contribute a small amount of energy, but it is not significant compared with solar and geothermal energy. Dbfirs 10:37, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Sun's Place in the Constellation?

In what constellation would the Sun ("Sol", or "Solus") be part of--146.111.156.100 (talk) 18:54, 23 March 2015 (UTC)? The "page" says it is closely associated with the star "Vega"; in the constellation of Lyra. This gives no indication of its stellar grouping? I've heard that our Sun orbits around the star (and therefore our solar system,) "Hyperion". As the layman knows, and is usually less informed, or taught about the basics concerning the dynamics of astronomy, questions such as this should be resolved. A greater appreciation for the stars, and less "mystery" can do much good. --146.111.156.100 (talk) 18:54, 23 March 2015 (UTC)Veryverser

Hi 146.111.156.100, your question is one of general astronomy and not actually directly related to this article (these talk pages are about the article). Still, I will try to answer your question. The reference to Vega in the article is about the *absolute* position of the Sun within the Milky Way. The "position" of the Sun in constellations, however, depends on the *relative* position of the Sun and the Earth. As the Earth orbits the Sun, the Sun appears to progress through the zodiac constellations. You will find this subject explained in many introductory textbooks on astronomy. What I am having a hard time finding is a simple visual explanation of this in Wikipedia. Other editors might weigh in on this. Isambard Kingdom (talk) 19:21, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

The best visual explanation of the Sun's apparent position relative to the constellations is at Ecliptic. The gif at the top combined with the first section explain the concept pretty well. A2soup (talk) 07:08, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

I assume the OP knows that the constellations are not real in terms of proximity. They are just imaginary collections of stars (and galaxies) that happen to appear in a certain direction when viewed from Earth. The sun cannot be part of a constellation, by definition, since it cycles through them. For stars close to the sun, see the diagram in Milky Way#Sun's location and neighborhood. Hyperion is just another name for the sun. Dbfirs 10:54, 24 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks to all contributors for clarifying the subject. However, I do insist that if what you contend that the the Sun (and most stars, and other bodies viewed from Earth,)don't fall in any sort of combined elliptical pattern, then they must adhere to a geometric patter common to various cited stars in a proscribed, and measured sector of space. --146.111.156.100 (talk) 20:00, 25 March 2015 (UTC)Veryverser