Astronomy 2:2

"Welcome back, I'm glad to see you all again," Professor Zumwalt said as her second years began to pile into the room. Today they were going to be looking at one massive neighbor they had in space. "The Sun is a star," she said opening up her lecture for the day. "For millions of years, the Sun has been worshiped as a god, the giver of life and light. Without it, we wouldn't be here to talk about it! It allows plants to grow and along with some other basic elements keeps our planet on track." Adorah said as the students began to take notes already. "Now, I am going to give you some basic information about the sun so keep some notes, and don't fall asleep." She smiled and then picked up a piece of chalk and began to write on the chalkboard.

• Largest Object in our Solar System
• Ranks in the top 10% of stars in the Universe
• Made up mostly of Hydrogen
• 1.4 Million Kilometers across - more than 100 times the Earth's diameter
• Over a million Earths could fit inside comfortably
• The gravitational pull keeps everything circling around it

"Now, the sun has been studied with a great deal by wizard astronomers and a witch named Elizabeth Willowvale first noticed that solar flares are not what muggles think they are, as they believe they are storms on the sun, and we won't go into that, but the flares are actually magical energy projecting out from the Sun towards us, towards the Solar System, and if we didn't have these solar flares there would be no magic, it's what is keeping magic running, and the amount of energy that goes into this is phenomenal." Professor Zumwalt glanced at the clock on her desk and smiled up at the students.

"Sadly, that is all the time we have for today, you may go once you've finished copying down the board." she smiled. "Oh and don't forget the homework while you're at it," she added. Adorah waited for the last student to head out before going out herself and locking up the rooms behind her. She was feeling tired and was ready for a full night's rest.

--
For full credit, RP the lesson.
For extra credit write a short essay (up to 6 sentences; you'll receive a point for each sentence up to 6) about the Sun with information not provided in class. (Please make sure to have your source listed once again and by this, I mean the website you(OOC) are using for your character!)

 

[Aaron Dela Cruz]

Aaron tried to take notes coherently as the Professor gave them a bit of a lecture on the whole thing. Of course he knew the sun was a star, who didn’t know that, he’d learned it in like young elementary school, it was one of the first things they learned when they studied the solar system in science class. Shouldn’t this have been something they learned in like day one of the class? He’d always just taken it to be kind of common knowledge. He felt like none of the information they were given today was another he actually needed to write down because he was pretty sure he learned all of this like half his life ago (which wasn’t all that long since he was only twelve, but it was long enough for a twelve year old) Though he wasn’t too sure how he felt about the idea that solar flares powered magic, that felt kind of like a lie, but he didn’t know enough about magic to know whether that was true or not. Still, he copied down the rest of the notes as the class finished up.​

 

[Evan DAramitz]

Evan filed into the Astronomy classroom, once again exhausted. He had been up late studying for Transfiguration - He still had yet to fully form a button out of a beetle, though that might be because Evan was terrified of the tiny things. Imagine if it crawled on him! Ew. He shuddered.

Professor Zumwalt began the lesson, stating that the Sun had been worshipped for years as a god, a giver of life and light as well. Then she began writing about the Sun on the board. Evan began noting down the information, yawning here and there as he attempted to keep up.

~The Sun is the largest object in our solar system
~Is one of the top 10% of the stars in the universe
~made up of mostly Hydrogen
~1.4 million kilometers across which is more than 100 times the Earth’s diameter.
~over a million Earths can fit inside comfortably~The gravitational pull keeps everything in the solar system circling around it.

Professor Zumwalt continued lecturing, telling them about a witch named Elizabeth Willowvale, who’d noticed that the solar flares that muggles thought were storms on the sun, were actually magical energy projecting out from the Sun. Evan sat up straight at this information, as it was explained that without these magical solar flares, there would be no magic.

That was fascinating to the muggle-raised wizard. He hadn’t given much thought as to how wizards and witches originally got their magic. It was amazing to know that the Sun gave wizards and witches life as well as gave their Earth life. He filed out of the classroom, going over and over it in his head.


Evan D’Aramitz
Ravenclaw Year 2
Source: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun)

The sun orbits what is known as the Galactic Center - which is the center of the universe - at a distance of 24k to 28k light years. It’s distance from Earth, in comparison is only 8 light-minutes. The Sun’s mass is about 330,000 times the size of Earth, and makes up about 99.86% of the total mass in the entire solar system. The Sun is what is known as a yellow dwarf star, though its light is actually white.