Tom Goodhart, age 11, of Indianapolis, Ind., for his question:
Do stars rotate?
All the heavenly bodies measured have been found to rotate on their axes. It seems to be a rule of the universe that the spheres must spin around like dizzy tops. A star, however, is made of restless gases that behave somewhat like fluids, and so it does not rotate altogether in a solid sphere, as the earth does.
Our starry sun turns around fastest at its equator. There it turns completely around once in 2.65 earth days. At latitudes 40 North and South of the solar equator, the rotation Period is 27 days. Near its Poles., the sun turns once around in 34 days.