The Sun

[An excerpt Taking Back Astronomy:  The Splendor of God’s Creation by Jason Lisle]  “...[T]he “greater light” that God created on day 4—the sun. The sun (like other stars) is a glowing hot ball of hydrogen gas. It derives energy from the fusion of hydrogen to helium in the core. The sun is effectively a stable hydrogen bomb. It is an extremely efficient source of energy, placed at just the right distance to provide the right amount of light and heat for the earth.

The sun is about 400 times more distant than the moon. Remarkably, it is also 400 times larger. So it has the same angular size as the moon—meaning it appears the same size and covers the same portion of the sky. It is interesting that God made both of the “great lights” the same angular size—and far larger (in angle) than any of the other celestial objects. There is no naturalistic reason why the sun and moon would be at just the right distances to have the same apparent size as seen from earth. As far as we know, the earth is the only planet for which this is the case.

The sun is over 100 times the diameter of the earth. If it were hollow, it could hold over 1 million earths. At first, it seems almost “wasteful” to create such a massive globe merely to provide light for earth: until we consider that God created the sun just as easily as the rest of the universe. It wasn’t at all difficult for Him (Jeremiah 32:17) and it demonstrates His great power. At the incredible distance of 93 million miles (150 million km), we cannot fully appreciate just how far away the sun is. An analogy may be helpful. How long would it take to drive 93 million miles? If we were to drive 65 miles per hour (105 km/hr), it would take 163 years to drive this distance. We couldn’t drive this far in our lifetime.

The sun is far from the earth, and yet the earth is much closer to the sun than many of the other planets. Consider Pluto, a tiny frozen world at the outer edge of the planets of the solar system. Pluto (on average) is about 40 times farther away from the sun than the earth is. Traveling at 65 miles per hour, it would take about 6,500 years to reach Pluto. This is comparable to the age of the universe. The solar system is truly vast; if it had been the only thing God had made, we should certainly be impressed. Yet, God has created on even larger scales. Consider the distances between the stars.

Let’s start with the nearest star system to the earth (besides the sun), the Alpha Centauri system. Unlike the solar system, Alpha Centauri contains more than one star. Two bright stars (comparable to the sun in size and color) revolve around each other every 80 years. A third faint red dwarf star called “Proxima” lies farther away. The distance to this system is about 25 trillion miles. Such a number has little meaning to most of us; who can comprehend 25 trillion miles? This is about 6,800 times farther away from the earth than Pluto is.

To help grasp this to some extent, let’s imagine that we had a miniature scale model of the solar system with Pluto’s orbit being only one foot (about 30 cm) in diameter. The sun would be approximately in the center, and the earth would be just over an eighth of an inch (3.8 mm) away from the sun. The sun itself would be smaller than the period at the end of this sentence. Where would we place the next nearest star in our one-foot scale model solar system? At this scale, Alpha Centauri would be over half a mile (about one km) away, and that’s just the nearest star system. Our galaxy is comprised of countless numbers of stars at much greater distances. Using our one-foot scale model solar system, the galaxy would be larger than the Pacific Ocean!”  Full text:  Taking Back Astronomy: The Splendor of God's Creation by Jason Lisle http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/tba/splendor-of-creation

"The Heavens Declare Creation and Science Confirms it." Jason Lisle

Sidebar:  :alien: Star Trek:  The Next Generation trivia question.  Do you notice an error at the beginning of the show?  Hint:  Redshift blueshift.. :skeptic:

Da…da…da…da--da..da..da

Response to comment [from a "Christian"]:  "It is also the visual appearance of the eternal Lake of Fire..."

The sun is illustrative of the glory of Christ (Re 1:16; 10:1) as well as (when darkened) of severe calamities (Eze 32:7; Joe 2:10,31; Mt 24:29; Re 9:2).