The sun

1. Before the telescope astronomers used several instruments; the astrolabe, the nocturnal, the armillary sphere, the cross staff, the quadrant and the dioptra.
2. Refracting telescopes refract or bend light.  Reflecting telescopes uses mirrors to reflect light.
3. Nuclear reactions are constantly occurring on the sun.
4. The sun can continue to supply us with energy for another 500,000 years.  When you consider how old the earth is, that's not very long.
5.  The sun can reach temperatures of 15 million °C.
6.  Solar Wind
Solar wind is a stream of charged particles that are released from the upper atmosphere of the sun.  The solar wind flows outward supersonically.  The speed of the solar wind varies but can reach up to one million miles per hour.  The solar wind played an important role in how our solar system came to be.  After our sun was born it collected dust and gas around it, growing.  Eventually the sun ignited forming our sun.  Other smaller clumps of dust and gas became planets, moons, comets and asteoids of our solar system.  When the solar winds started to blow they bkew the remaining dust and gas out of our solar system (so no additional planets and stuff).  The solar winds create a bubble called the heliosphere, this defines the edges of oyrbsolar system.

Solar wind is mostly made up if the electricity conducting particles called plasma ions.  These particles would wreck havoc with our electronics here on earth but our magnetosphere protects us.  Some times however a bit of solar wind gets through and do make some electronics not work.  The solar winds also carry radiation (UV radiation).  Again we are mostly protected on earth.  Our ozone layer helps protect us from this.  We can "see" solar wind as they react with the ions in our magnetosphere.

This reaction is called the Aurorae.  There are two Aurorae.  The one we see in Canada is called the Aurora Borealis (because it is best seen where the great boreal Forrest is & anywhere north of that) as the solar winds bounce off the magnetic field at the north pole.  The same thing happens at the south pole.  The solar winds actually bounce off our entire magnetosphere but since it is strongest at the poles, this is where we see them.