That Lucky Old Sun
In a 1949 #1 hit song, Frankie Laine crooned “that lucky old sun has nothin’ to do but roll around heaven all day.” I like the song, but with all due respects to Frankie, it just ain’t so.In fact, the Sun is an incredible workhorse that’s on duty 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, doing the job it’s been doing for 5 billion years and will continue doing another 5 billion, give or take a few hundred million years. And we can thank our lucky stars that it is for without the Sun we wouldn’t be.
Should the Sun suddenly go out-which it won’t any time soon-we would go out with it, and very quickly. It’s easy to take the Sun for granted, and during hot summer days we might even find ourselves having bad thoughts about it. Yet all we have to do is imagine a frozen, dark Earth, and we promptly become Sun-appreciators. But providing warmth and light to see by is just part of the Sun’s job. Animal life depends upon plant life for survival. Chlorophyll-containing green plants-which include virtually all the plants we eat-require light for photosynthesis, the process by which they live and grow-and that light directly or indirectly comes from the Sun. Photosynthesis also converts the carbon dioxide we breath out into the oxygen we need to breathe in. So, no Sun, no plants. And no plants, no plant-eating, oxygen-breathing animals-and thus, no us. The Sun is also the mother of all energy generators. According to Wikipedia, the amount of solar energy reaching Earth in an hour is more energy than the world uses in a year. And the solar energy reaching Earth in a year is twice the total amount of energy we could ever obtain from all of Earth’s non-renewable resources-coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium-combined. So it turns out that our “lucky” old Sun really has a lot more to do than just roll around heaven. But as essential as it is, it also has its darker side, so to speak. The radiation that provides all the life-giving benefits also has destructive powers. Sun burns, skin cancers, cataracts, and heat strokes are but some of the ways the Sun is harmful to us. And that same radiation-mostly ultraviolet-that damages us also breaks down and destroys many products we rely on daily, like paint, rubber, plastic, and roofing. And if that’s not enough, our star of life and energy will eventually become a death star of destruction. In the last stages of its life, the Sun will expand, becoming so huge that Mercury, Venus, and Earth will be vaporized and consumed. All Earth-bound life that still exists in 5 billion years will be extinguished by the very star that made life possible. So that hardworking “lucky” old Sun is a mixed bag, deserving both our gratitude and our wary respect. Sky Calendar.
- Jan. 26 Mon.: The new Moon produces an annular solar eclipse which is not visible from our hemisphere.
- 30 Fri. evening: The crescent Moon is above Venus.
- Feb. 2 Mon.: Groundhog Day and Candlemas, a cross-quarter day celebrating the middle of winter; and the Moon is at 1st quarter.
- 9 Mon.: Full Moon is called Wolf Moon, Snow Moon, and Hunger Moon.
- 11 Wed.: In a somewhat unusual occurrence, the Moon is seen below Saturn in the west in the morning, and then to the lower right of Saturn as they rise in the east by 9 p.m. that evening.
Naked-eye Planets. [The Sun, Moon, and planets rise in the east and set in the west because of Earth's west-to-east rotation on its axis.] Evening: Brilliant “evening star” Venus is now at its highest in the southwest at dark, and Saturn is up by 9 p.m. Morning: Saturn is high in the west, and by early February Mercury begins appearing very low in the east southeast at dawn. Stargazer appears every other week. Paul Derrick is an amateur astronomer who lives in Waco. Contact him at 918 N. 30th, Waco, 76707, (254) 753-6920 or paulderrickwaco@aol.com. See the Stargazer Web site at stargazerpaul.com.
