The extraordinary structure of the _fully luminous_ Disc of the Sun, as
seen through Sir James South’s great achromatic, in a drawing made by
Mr. Gwilt, resembles compressed curd, or white almond-soap, or a mass
of asbestos fibres, lying in a _quaquaversus_ direction, and compressed
into a solid mass. There can be no illusion in this phenomenon; it
is seen by every person with good vision, and on every part of the
sun’s luminous surface or envelope, which is thus shown to be not a
_flame_, but a soft solid or thick fluid, maintained in an incandescent
state by subjacent heat, capable of being disturbed by differences of
temperature, and broken up as we see it when the sun is covered with
spots or openings in the luminous matter.--_North-British Review_, No.
16.
Copernicus named the sun the lantern of the world (_lucerna
mundi_); and Theon of Smyrna called it the heart of the universe.
The mass of the sun is, according to Encke’s calculation of
Sabine’s pendulum formula, 359,551 times that of the earth, or
355,499 times that of the earth and moon together; whence the
density of the sun is only about ¼ (or more accurately 0·252) that
of the earth. The volume of the sun is 600 times greater, and its
mass, according to Galle, 738 times greater, than that of all the
planets combined. It may assist the mind in conceiving a sensuous
image of the magnitude of the sun, if we remember that if the solar
sphere were entirely hollowed out, and the earth placed in its
centre, there would still be room enough for the moon to describe
its orbit, even if the radius of the latter were increased 160,000
geographical miles. A railway-engine, moving at the rate of thirty
miles an hour, would require 360 years to travel from the earth to
the sun. The diameter of the sun is rather more than one hundred
and eleven times the diameter of the earth. Therefore the volume or
bulk of the sun must be nearly _one million four hundred thousand_
times that of the earth. Lastly, if all the bodies composing the
solar system were formed into one globe, it would be only about the
five-hundredth part of the size of the sun.