• Question: how did they they take a picture of a sun when I heard if anything goes close to the sun it gets destroyed

    Asked by to Edward, Ian, Mathew, Naomi, sakshisharda on 19 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Ian Stephenson

      Ian Stephenson answered on 19 Jun 2014:

      The sun is VERY hot, and also very heavy, so if you get close to hit you’ll burn up. You’ll also get dragged down and crushed by gravity, but the whole burnt to a crisp thing is probably a more immediate danger.

      However its also VERY VERY BIG. You don’t need to be close to it to take a picture of it – just look out the window. It’s 150Million Km (or should that be 150gigametres 150gm!) away. We can call that a safe distance.

      We could take a picture of the sun from earth using a telescope (probably the easiest – though don’t look through a telescope at the sun… you’ll be blinded!). We’ve also got spacecraft a lot closer. They’ll probably burn up at some point, but they’ll get some good pictures first

Comments