The Sun: Our Nearest Star

Abstract

We have in our celestial backyard, a prime example of a variable star. The Sun, long thought to be "perfect" and unvarying, began to reveal its cycles in the early 1600s as Galileo Galilei and Christoph Scheiner used a telescope to study sunspots. For the past four hundred years, scientists have accumulated data, showing a magnetic cycle that repeats, on average, every eleven (or twenty-two) years. In addition, modern satellites have shown that the energy output at radio and x-ray wavelengths also varies with this cycle. This talk will showcase the Sun as a star and discuss how solar studies may be used to understand other stars.