sun (1), sonne, sunne

[A. S. sunne (fem.); cogn. with Dut.zon (fem.); Icel. sunna (fem.); Ger. sonne (fem.); O. H. German sunna; Goth. sunna (masc.), sun no (fem.); Icel. sól; Lat. sol =the sun; Sansc.súna=sun, son.] outer margin constituting an irregular outline full of strange and varying forms. The external envelope, the nature of which is yet uncertain, is the outer corona. M. Camille Flam marion tells us that the sun weighs 324,000 times as much as our globe and is 1,283.000 times the size of it. To form an idea of the superiority of the size of the sun over the earth we can represent the sun by a sphere of 22 meters in sation, which is rapid, almost instantaneous, travels at the rate of twenty-eight meters per second. If a child asked for the sun, as children sometimes do for the moon, and his nurse gave it to him, and he had arms long enough to reach the sun so that it burnt his fingers he would never feel this burn. The child would become an old man and die long before the sensation of burning could pa from the tips of his fingers to his brain, for the time requisite for the transmi ion of this sensation would not be le than 163 years. Kirchhoff considered that the following elements were present in the sun: Sodium, iron, calcium, magnesium, nickel, barium, copper, and zinc. Angström and Thalen found sodium, iron, calcium, magnesium, and nickel, but failed to detect the rest. In their place they met with chromium, cobalt, hydrogen, manganese, and titanium. The intense heat not only vaporizes them, but drives them into forms spectroscopically different from any known to exist in the earth. The sun's heat raises vapor from the earth, ultiment for the growth of plants and the sustenance mately producing rain, supplying a nece ary eleof animals. Stored up in coal it supplies us with fuel and gives us steam as a creator of energy, while the sun's light similarly stored furnishes the gas which illumines houses and cities. Though the sun may obtain as fuel a few meteors, it would expire if it had nothing else to burn. But the enormous radiation from its disc into space is partly, if not entirely, counteracted by fresh heat generated by the contraction of its volume. Hence, on the hypothesis now generally accepted, the sun was at one time an enormous ma of incandescent vapor, which, becoming more condensed as ages roll on [NEBULAR-HYPOTHESIS], is slowly diminishing in size, and will at length cease to give forth light and heat. Some authorities think this will not come to pa for ten millions of years, but Sir William Thomson considers" that it would be rash to reckon on more than five to six million years of sunlight for the future." [FLASH SPECTRUM.] 2. Pyrotechny: A kind of firework. A strong paper case is filled with a composition which does not burn so fast as rocket-composition, driven solid. Numbers of these are attached, at short intervals, to wooden frames, usually circular. The suns emit a steady and brilliant stream of light, and are called stationary or revolving according to the nature of the frame on which they are fixed. (1) To have the sun in one's eyes: To be intoxicated. "He furthermore took occasion to apologize for any negligence that might be perceptible in his dre , on the ground that last night he had had 'the sun very strong in his eyes ;' by which expre ion he was understood to convey to his hearers, in the most delicate manner po ible, the information that he had been extremely drunk." Dickens: Old Curiosity Shop , ch. ii. (2) Under the sun: In the world; on earth. "There is no new thing under the sun."-Eccles. i. 4. Sun is very largely used in composition, the meanings of the compounds being in most instances sufficiently obvious; as, sun -lit, sun - scorched, .