STRUCTURE OF THE LUMINOUS DISC OF THE SUN.
The extraordinary structure of the fully luminous Disc of the Sun, as seen through Sir James South’s great achromatic, in a drawing made by Mr. Gwilt, resembles compressed curd, or white almond-soap, or a mass of asbestos fibres, lying in a quaquaversus direction, and compressed into a solid mass. There can be no illusion in this phenomenon; it is seen by every person with good vision, and on every part of the sun’s luminous surface or envelope, which is thus shown to be not a flame, but a soft solid or thick fluid, maintained in an incandescent state by subjacent heat, capable of being disturbed by differences of temperature, and broken up as we see it when the sun is covered with spots or openings in the luminous matter.—North-British Review, No. 16.
Copernicus named the sun the lantern of the world (lucerna mundi); and Theon of Smyrna called it the heart of the universe. The mass of the sun is, according to Encke’s calculation of Sabine’s pendulum formula, 359,551 times that of the earth, or 355,499 times that of the earth and moon together; whence the density of the sun is only about ¼ (or more accurately 0·252) that of the earth. The volume of the sun is 600 times greater, and its mass, according to Galle, 738 times greater, than that of all the planets combined. It may assist the mind in conceiving a sensuous image of the magnitude of the sun, if we remember that if the solar sphere were entirely hollowed out, and the earth placed in its centre, there would still be room enough for the moon to describe its orbit, even if the radius of the latter were increased 160,000 geographical miles. A railway-engine, moving at the rate of thirty miles an hour, would require 360 years to travel from the earth to the sun. The diameter of the sun is rather more than one hundred and eleven times the diameter of the earth. Therefore the volume or bulk of the sun must be nearly one million four hundred thousand times that of the earth. Lastly, if all the bodies composing the solar system were formed into one globe, it would be only about the five-hundredth part of the size of the sun.