Chloroplasts

Pigment molecules in plants absorb and transfer solar energy using a special arrangement that funnels light toward a reaction center. One of the first steps in this complex process depends on chlorophyll and other pigment molecules.

The sun generates energy from a process called nuclear fusion. During nuclear fusion, the high pressure and temperature in the sun’s core cause nuclei to separate from their electrons. Hydrogen nuclei fuse to form one helium atom. About half of the radiant energy is absorbed by land and oceans.

Nothing is more important to us on Earth than the Sun. Without the Sun’s heat and light, the Earth would be a lifeless ball of ice-coated rock. The Sun warms our seas, stirs our atmosphere, generates our weather patterns, and gives energy to the growing green plants that provide the food and oxygen for life on Earth.

The Sun is also moving in two other ways. First, it is not stationary in the solar system; it is actually in orbit around every body that is also in orbit around it, such as all the planets. However, as the Sun is so massive its orbit is nominal.

Yes, the Sun – in fact, our whole solar system – orbits around the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. We are moving at an average velocity of 828,000 km/hr. But even at that high rate, it still takes us about 230 million years to make one complete orbit around the Milky Way!

Since the Sun is not a solid body, different parts of the Sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the Sun spins around once about every 25 days, but at its poles the Sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.

The sun, “a big ball of flowing, gassy plasma,” is so big that at its equator a day would be about 24-and-a-half earth days, but at its slower moves poles it would take about 34 earth days.

From Earth, the Sun looks like it moves across the sky in the daytime and appears to disappear at night. This is because the Earth is spinning towards the east. The Earth spins about its axis, an imaginary line that runs through the middle of the Earth between the North and South poles.

The sun remains in the space and the earth revolve around it. When the sun goes down vanishing over the horizon it doesn’t mean that the sun had gone to somewhere else. It indicates that the earth is continuously rotating on its axis.

Because space is a near-perfect vacuum — meaning it has exceedingly few particles — there’s virtually nothing in the space between stars and planets to scatter light to our eyes. And with no light reaching the eyes, they see black.

QUESTION: Why does the sun not shine at night? ANSWER: The truth is that the sun is always shining and will shine continuously until it dies. The part of Earth which faces the sun during rotation gets sunlight, and almost half of the Earth does not get sunlight at that instant.

Norway

The earth is rotating at a tilted axis relative to the sun, and during the summer months, the North Pole is angled towards our star. That’s why, for several weeks, the sun never sets above the Arctic Circle. Svalbard is the place in Norway where the midnight sun occurs for the longest period.

Spring in the Norwegian arctic seems to spend a long time plotting its annual comeback. When it returns, though, it does not disappoint.

Every year, the longest night in the world is celebrated in Ushuaia on June 21, when the city gets decked out and sleeping is forbidden. Even though celebrations started before, it was not until 1986 that the festival went national and, ever since, it has been held for three days: from June 20 thru 22.

December 21

New Zealand

Summer and Winter Solstices in Iceland Iceland’s longest day of the year (the summer solstice) is around the 21st of June. On that day in Reykjavík, the sun sets just after midnight and rises again right before 3 AM, with the sky never going completely dark.

United States

Antarctica has six months of daylight in its summer and six months of darkness in its winter. The seasons are caused by the tilt of Earth’s axis in relation to the sun. The direction of the tilt never changes. But as the Earth orbits the sun, different parts of the planet are exposed to direct sunlight.