NASA Space Place: Studying the sun is a gas!

By Michael Gregory

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

If someone asked you to draw the sun, would you make a little yellow circle with lines coming out of it? That's fun, but what does the sun look like up close? We can see the shapes and outlines of craters and mountains on the moon, but what about the sun? Does it have rocks and dust and hills and valleys? Good question.

The sun has been a mystery for thousands of years. In the first place, no human being has ever been to the sun. It's way too hot for anyone to go near it - even a million miles away would be too close. Also, we di...