Stars/Sun/Heliology

Heliology is the science of Helios, Sol, otherwise known as the Sun.

Theoretical heliology
Def. the "scientific study of the Sun" is called heliology.

Def. the "star at the center of the Solar System, represented in astronomy and astrology by ⨀" is called the Sun.

Def. the "star that the Earth revolves around and from which it receives light and warmth. " is called the sun.

Gamma rays
The Sun is seen in gamma rays by COMPTEL during a June 15, 1991, solar flare. The Sun is ordinarily not known to produce gamma rays, but during this solar flare, streams of neutrons poured into the intrastellar medium to create gamma rays. This image provided the first evidence that the Sun can accelerate particles for several hours. This phenomenon was not observed before CGRO and represents a new understanding of solar flares.

Visuals
At the right is a visual image of the Sun.

Violets
The image at the right is of the Sun using an H I violet band pass filter.

Blues
At the right is an image of the Sun through a Ca K extreme violet filter inverted through false color.

Yellows
At the right is a visual image of the Sun with some sunspots visible. The two small spots in the middle have about the same diameter as our planet Earth.

Reds
The image at right here is a red image taken through a solar telescope.

Infrareds
At the right is an infrared image of the Sun.

Radios
At right is a radio image of the Sun at 4.6 GHz. "The brightest discrete radio source is the Sun, but it is much less dominant than it is in visible light. The radio sky is always dark, even when the Sun is up, because atmospheric dust doesn't scatter radio waves, whose wavelengths are much longer than the dust particles."

"The quiet Sun at 4.6 GHz imaged by the [Very Large Array] VLA with a resolution of 12 arcsec, or about 8400 km on the surface of the Sun. The brightest features (red) in this false-color image have brightness temperatures ~ 106 K and coincide with sunspots. The green features are cooler and show where the Sun's atmosphere is very dense. At this frequency the radio-emitting surface of the Sun has an average temperature of 3 x 104 K, and the dark blue features are cooler yet. The blue slash crossing the bottom of the disk is a feature called a filament channel, where the Sun's atmosphere is very thin: it marks the boundary of the South Pole of the Sun. The radio Sun is somewhat bigger than the optical Sun: the solar limb (the edge of the disk) in this image is about 20000 km above the optical limb."

Hydrogens
"In the 1920s, Payne [3] and Russell [4] reported that the Sun’s atmosphere consisted mostly of hydrogen (H) and helium (He), but Hoyle [5] notes that he and others "in the astronomical circles to which I was privy" (p. 153) continued until after the Second World War to believe that the Sun was made mostly of iron. Then Hoyle notes that "much to my surprise" (p. 154), the high-hydrogen, low-iron model was suddenly adopted without opposition."

For comparison with other stars, the Sun has the following properties:
 * The effective temperature of the surface of the Sun's photosphere is 5,778 K.
 * Metallicity, Z = 0.0122, "lowest seismic estimate of solar metallicity is Z = 0.0187 [to the] highest is Z = 0.0239, with uncertainties in the range of 12%-19%."
 * Stellar companion: Jupiter at present, perhaps Uranus in some larger form previously
 * Age: 4.57 billion years
 * B-V = 0.656 ± 0.005
 * Rotation rate: 7.189 x 103 km h-1 (at the equator), equatorial circumference of 4,379,000 kilometres divided by sidereal rotation period of 609.12 hours

Heliums
Solar eruption in the image on the right was captured by the Solar Dynamics Observatory using the extreme ultraviolet emission line at 30.4 nm of singly ionized Helium, or He II, and corresponds to a temperature of approximately 50,000 K.

Stellar surface fusion
"Concerning the particles which interact at the Sun, evidence for accelerated 3He enrichment was obtained from the detection (Share & Murphy 1998) of a gamma-ray line at 0.937 MeV produced by the reaction 16O(3He,p)18F∗".

For "essentially all of [some 20] flares 3He/4He can be as large as 0.1, while for some of them values as high as 1 are possible. In addition, [...] for the particles that interact and produce gamma rays, 3He enrichments are present for both impulsive and gradual flares."

"Plasma is the medium for magnetically or inertially-confined controlled thermonuclear fusion. A plasma of deuterium and tritium ions heated to a temperature of 108 degrees Kelvin undergoes thermonuclear burn, producing energetic helium ions and neutrons from fusion reactions."

On the right is a diagram illustrating deuterium-tritium fusion in three steps:
 * 1) the D and T accelerating towards each other at thermonuclear speeds,
 * 2) the creation of an unstable He-5 nucleus,
 * 3) the ejection of a neutron and repulsion of the He-4 nucleus.

The "energy" is released in the form of the velocities of the constituent parts being thrown apart, or radiated apart.

Helios
There is "an Egyptian ostrakon (first century B.C.) cited by Franz Boll: the ostrakon identifies the planet Saturn as the great god Re.4", where 4 lists Boll, Kronos-Helios, 343, R8.

"But many scholars notice that among the Greeks and Latins there prevailed a mysterious confusion of the "sun" (Greek helios, Latin sol) with the outermost planet [Saturn]. Thus the expression "star of Helios" or "star of Sol" was applied to Saturn.5" Where 5 is Bouche-Leclerq, L'Astrologie Grecque, 93, note 2.

"Though the Greek Kronos was the Latin Saturn, Nonnus gives Kronos as the Arab name of the "sun.""

"Hyginus, in listing the planets, names first Jupiter, then the planet "of Sol, others say of Saturn."6 Why was the planet most distant from the sun called both "sun" and "Saturn"?"

Helios and El
The "Greek name Helios so closely resembles the Greek transliteration of the Phoenician El that classical authors confused the two gods; since El is the Greek Kronos--and is so translated by Philo--Kronos/Saturn came to be confused with Helios, the sun.7 Yet, as noted by Boll, the identification is more wide-spread than generally acknowledged and is much more than a misunderstanding of names.8"

Helios and Kronos
"In the Epinomis of Plato (who lived in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.), there is an enumeration of the planets, which as customarily translated, entails this unstartling statemnet: "There remain, then, three stars (planets), one of which is preeminent among them for slowness, and some call him after Kronos."9 Yet the original reading is not Kronos but Helios10--which is to say that Plato (or his pupil Phillip of Opus, to whom some ascribe authorship of the Epinomis) gave the name Helios to Saturn. But copyists, who could not believe that Helios was anything other than the sun, "corrected" the reading to "Kronos." Moreover, writes Boll, this practice of "correcting" the name Helios to Kronos was not uncommon among later copyists.11 Originally, Boll concludes, Helios and Saturn were "one and the same god."12"

Shamash and Saturn
"Of the Babylonian star-worshipers the chronicler Diodorus writes: "To the one we call Saturn they give a special name, 'Sun-Star'."13 Among the Babylonians the "sun"-god par excellence was Shamash, the "light of the gods," whom scholars uniformly identify with the solar orb."

In the Babylonian astronomical texts the identification of Shamash with Saturn is unequivocal: "the planet Saturn is Shamash" they boldly declare.

In support of this numerous examples are cited involving "the interchangeable application of the term 'Šamaš' to either the great orb of the day or the planet Saturn."

Ninurta
"The apparent equivalence of Saturn and the "sun" goes back to Sumerian times, as is evident in the dual aspect of the creator god Ninurta."

"Langdon deems Ninurta both the sun and saturn: "... the sun-god Ninurta ... in the original Sumerian Epic of Creation, defeated the dragon of chaos and founded cities ... In Sumero-Babylonian religion he is the War-god and planet Saturn."16"

"It is not difficult to see why Ninurta, or Ningirsu, though identified with the planet Saturn in the astronomical tests, came to be confused with the solar orb."

"Ningirsu, coming from Eridu, rose in overwhelming splendour. In the land it became day."

"Saturn, as Ningirsu, is "the god who changes darkness into light."

"The priests of Lagash invoke him as "King, Storm, whose splendour is heroic." "

Setting of the solar orb
"Considerable evidence suggests that, to the ancients, the day began with [...] the setting of the solar orb. It is widely acknowledged that the Egyptian day once began at sunset.25"

"The same is true of the Babylonians and Western Semitic days.26"

"The Athenians computed the space of a day from sunset to sunset, and the habit appears to have prevailed among northern European peoples.27"

"Saturn "came forth in over-whelming splendour. In the land it became day."28"

"So long as the solar orb was visible, the fiery globe of Saturn remained subdued, unable to compete with the sheer light of the former body. But once the solar orb sank beneath the horizon, Saturn and its circle of secondary lights acquired a terrifying radiance."

Center of the Cosmos
"The Greek sun-god Helios, in an old tradition, resides at the center of the Cosmos, with the heavenly bodies revolving around him.108"

"Upon evaluating the imagery of Helios in Homer's Odyssey, Butterworth concludes that the mythical sun remained always at the zenith, the celestial pole.109"

Hypotheses

 * 1) Helios was an early name for Saturn, or a former Saturn entity.