Steve Bowen, age 11, of Bessemer City, N. C., for his question:
Does the sun move?
The sun, of course, seems to move over the sky every day. It rises in the east and sets below the western horizon and, in the winter months, its path over the sky is farther to the north. All this, however, is called the apparent motion of the sun. It is the way the sun appears to move. If it really moved in this way, it would have to circle around our globe once every 4 hours. This, we know is not true at all.
What really happens is this. The earth spins around on its axis like a top. First one side then the other faces the sun. The earth is routing‑towards the east that the latest view of the heavens is always coming into view above the eastern horizon. The sun, the moon, the stars and all the heavenly bodies rise in the east and pass out of sight below the western horizon.
For a long time, mankind believed that the apparent motions of the sun and the heavenly bodies were the true motions. It was a nice idea, People could go on believing that our earth was the center of the universe and everything in the heavens moved around it. The truth is, of course, that our earth is but a tiny ,speck in the heavenly parade.
As we study the truth about the heavenly bodies, a strange thing seams to hold true. Everything in the sky is on the move. The planets rotate and revolve around in their orbits. The moon and the other satellites rotate, revolve around the planets and orbit the sun. The asteroids orbit the sun and even the meteors are space travelers, The stars, which seem so fixed in their patterns, are traveling perhaps fastest of all. And our sun is a star.
The sun, like our earth, rotates on its axis. However, it is made of gases which are pulled out of shape by the rotating movement.
The speed is fastest at its equator and slower towards the two poles. At the equator, the rotation time is 25 earth‑days. One‑third of the way towards either pole, the surface of the sun rotates once in about earth 27 days. Five‑sixths of the distance from the equator to the poles earth. the rotation time is 33/days. The further we get from the sun's equator, the slower its gaseous surface rotates.
The sun and all the stars are part of the Milky Way and this huge system of stars spins around like a pinwheel. Our sun and the Solar System move around with the rest of the Milky Way. The sun and its family travel this path at a speed of 600,000 miles an hour. The apparent motions of the rising and setting sun are not what they seem to b®. ‑Its real motions are even more surprising. The big star rotates on its axis and speeds around a gigantic path in the wheeling Milky Way.