Washington: The sun appears to be far less active than similar stars in terms of brightness variations caused by sunspots and other phenomena – a “boring” personality, according to scientists, that may not be a bad thing for us Earthlings.
Researchers said on Thursday that an examination of 369 stars similar to the sun in surface temperatures, size and rotation period – it takes the sun about 369 – 1/2 days to rotate once on its axis – showed that they displayed on average five times more brightness variability than the sun.
“This variability is caused by dark spots on the surface of the star rotating in and out of view,” said astronomer Timo Reinhold of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, lead author of the research published in the journal Science . “A direct measure of solar activity is the number of sunspots on the surface.”
The sun – essentially a hot ball of hydrogen and helium – is an average-sized star that formed more than 4.5 billion years ago and is roughly halfway through its lifespan. Its diameter is about , miles (1.4 million km ). Its surface temperature is about 24, (degrees Fahrenheit) 5, 500 degrees Celsius).
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