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Do you remember how many stars are in the solar system? ● How is this different from the number of stars in the entire Milky Way galaxy?

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#1. WHERE is the SUN? HOW BIG? HOW FAR?

The Sun, Earth, and planets are very far from other stars in the galaxy.

The Sun has many layers. The energy that makes the Sun glow is created in the deepest inner layers of the Sun. Sunspots occur in a layer called the photosphere which defines the round shape of the Sun we perceive from Earth. The outermost layer is called the solar corona. The corona is only visible to human eyes when the Moon totally eclipses the Sun.

Image credit: NASA

Drag and Drop Fill-in-the-Blanks

FITB #1. Challenge Level: Medium. Word count: 371. # Blanks: 20. Prerequisites: none.

DRAG & DROP the words into the spaces in the paragraph below to FILL-IN-THE-BLANKS. NOTE: The word will only drop successfully when the cursor tip (or your fingertip on mobile devices) is within the light-colored box above the blank which will turn yellow when the word is properly positioned.
TO UNDO YOUR CHOICE click on the blue circle
next to the dropped word.

star New York Earth photosphere 100 billion solar system 93 million galaxy 50 feet bigger Moon minutes huge amounts planets pencil years fire grapefruit layer Proxima Centauri

The Sun is a star located at the center of the

. The Sun is massive and its gravity holds the eight

in orbit around it. Our world is called

and it is the third planet from the Sun.

Though we sometimes see pictures of the Sun that make it look like red flames, the Sun is not on

. The Sun is made of very hot gas that glows brightly due to the

of fusion energy created in its deep inner layers.

The Sun has many layers. The outermost

is called the solar corona. The corona is only visible to human eyes when the

totally blocks the light of the Sun during a total solar eclipse. Sunspots are dark patches on the Sun that occur in a layer below the corona called the

. The photosphere defines the size of the Sun we perceive from Earth. The Sun is much

than any planet. It is so big that about a million Earths would fit inside it!

The Sun is the ONLY

in our solar system, yet it is one of about

(100,000,000,000) stars in our spiral-shaped galaxy. The Sun is

miles (93,000,000 miles) from Earth. It takes sunlight eight

to travel to Earth. The Sun appears to be much brighter than other stars in our

because the Sun is much closer to Earth. Other stars are so far away that we only see twinkling points of light. Light from these distant stars can take many, many

to travel to Earth.

If the Sun were represented by a large grapefruit, then the size of Earth would be represented by the tip of a

. To represent the distance between the Sun and Earth, the pencil tip would be located 15 meters (or about

) away from the grapefruit Sun. In this scale model, the Moon would be a tiny grain only about 4 cm (1.5 inches) away from the pencil tip Earth. The next nearest star to the Sun in our galaxy (called

) would be represented by another

placed 2400 miles away. This is about the distance between California and

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