Our Sun Is A Star ! |
Our Sun Is A Star ! |
Guest_PhilCo126_* |
Feb 21 2006, 03:51 PM
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Guests |
A very simple topic title because everybody knows that our Sun is a Star ( lectured to 8 year olds all over the world ... )
But which scientist/Astronomer actually found out this 'simple' fact ? ( 17th Century CHristiaan HUYGENS studied the Sun, 19th Century Angelo SECHI even studied Sunspots ) I do know that 20th Century Fred HOYLE did a lot of calculations on the destiny of Stars but we might go back way earlier to know who found out that our Sun is a Star |
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Feb 21 2006, 04:49 PM
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#2
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 23 Joined: 30-June 05 Member No.: 422 |
But which scientist/Astronomer actually found out this 'simple' fact ? ( 17th Century CHristiaan HUYGENS studied the Sun, 19th Century Angelo SECHI even studied Sunspots ) Huygens used the comparative brightness of the Sun and Sirus (using a pinhole to reduce the former and his memory of the latter) and calcualted that Sirus is 27,000AU away (off by a factor of 20, but when you consider that Sirus is 8x brighter than the Sun -which Huygens couldn't have known- he was only off by a factor of 2.5; pretty damn impressive). Thus clearly it was known that the Sun is a star prior to the end of the 17th century. Indeed, the lack of apparent parallax indicated that the stars were very far -and thus Sun-like in their brightness- well prior to Copernicus. But agreed, it is an interesting question as to who made the first compelling argument that the Sun is a star. -Kevin |
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