GRAVITY OF SUN

Dear Anil

The sun is just a giant ball of gas held together by its own gravity; since there's no solid surface to be 'on',  Astronomers commonly define the 'surface' of the sun as the photosphere, the uppermost region of glowing opaque gas which is the 'surface' we see when we look at the sun. The photosphere lies 695000 km from the center of the sun, and the sun's mass is 2 x 10³⁰ kg.

The gravitational acceleration at a point on or above a spherical mass is

          M
g = G -----
         r2

where G is the universal gravitational constant (6.67 x 10^-11) and r and M are the distance and mass given above. We get

g = 275 m/s2

which is 28 times as strong as gravity on the surface of the Earth.

In other words, if you weighed 100 kg on Earth, you would feel like you weighed 2,800 kg if you tried to walk on the surface of the Sun.

All the best.                                                           

AKASH GOYAL

AskiitiansExpert-IIT Delhi

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