A 4000-year-old Egyptian myth talks about RΓ, the Sun God, who traveled through the sky in a sacred boat. Every morning the boat appeared above the horizon, in the east, and slowly crossed the entire celestial dome to then disappear behind the edge of the Earth, in the west. During the night, the boat continued its journey along an underground route to then reappear and give light for the new day. But the Egyptians were not the only ones with this legend. Other ancient populations have handed down similar tales: knowing that life on Earth would be impossible without the Sun, they had given the star the attributes of a supreme deity. Perhaps this is why it was only just prior to the Christian age that the Sun began to be studied with scientific rigour. But with what imprecision! For example, for the Greeks of the V century B.C. the Sun was a brilliant object - but no larger than a meter! It was the philosopher Anaxagoras, around 450 B.C., who considered the star to be a much larger and distant body, but even his evaluations were still very far from the truth. The Chinese knew much more already 2 000 years ago, but western civilization had to wait until Galileo built the first telescope to discover, at the beginning of the Seventeenth century, not only the distance and correct dimensions, but also that the Sun, far from being a bright and uniform disk, was also literally covered with spots.
A 4000-year-old Egyptian myth talks about RΓ, the Sun God, who traveled through the sky in a sacred boat. Every morning the boat appeared above the horizon, in the east, and slowly crossed the entire celestial dome to then disappear behind the edge of the Earth, in the west. During the night, the boat continued its journey along an underground route to then reappear and give light for the new day. But the Egyptians were not the only ones with this legend. Other ancient populations have handed down similar tales: knowing that life on Earth would be impossible without the Sun, they had given the star the attributes of a supreme deity. Perhaps this is why it was only just prior to the Christian age that the Sun began to be studied with scientific rigour. But with what imprecision! For example, for the Greeks of the V century B.C. the Sun was a brilliant object - but no larger than a meter! It was the philosopher Anaxagoras, around 450 B.C., who considered the star to be a much larger and distant body, but even his evaluations were still very far from the truth. The Chinese knew much more already 2 000 years ago, but western civilization had to wait until Galileo built the first telescope to discover, at the beginning of the Seventeenth century, not only the distance and correct dimensions, but also that the Sun, far from being a bright and uniform disk, was also literally covered with spots.
