The sun has a diameter of approximately 1 392 684 km, it surface temperature is around 5 550 degrees Celcius and is celebrating its 4.6 billionth birthday.
This is just some of the fun facts scientist shared with high school learners and CPUT students during a public lecture organised by F’SATI as part of the National Science Week 2015 celebration.
The celebrations are an initiative by the Department of Science and Technology that is observed country-wide that involves various stakeholders conducting science-based activities simultaneously in multiple sites per province.
This year’s theme was “The International Year of Light and Light Based Technologies” and at CPUT learners and students had the opportunity to listen to two space experts.
Dr Lee-Anne McKinnell, Managing Director of the South African Space Agency (SANSA) Space Science, delivered a talk titled “Applications from the near-Earth Space Environment,” while Prof Norman Fitz-Coy delivered a talk titled “A SmallSat Mission for On-Orbit Characterization of Radiation Effects”.
