The Sun

The Sun

Think of the hottest place you've ever been. It could be the Australian outback, a nudist beach, perhaps even where you are right now. Great, now think of that place with a small room, stuffed with about 150 people you know, with everyone wearing thick sweaters, tracksuit pants and breathing on each other. Why am I saying this? Because that is not even remotely close to how hot the Sun actually is, but that won’t stop tenacious tourists, like you, will it?

The hottest thing, since Miley Cyrus’ hit single “Wrecking Ball”

Being about 4.6 Billion years old, with a temperature 5 x 10⁶ K and a size that’s 12 000 times that of Earth, it’s no wonder your average travel agency even thinks of sending you to the Sun: Earth is a much safer and well-explored place. But why go somewhere someone else has already been? I, for one, haven’t personally reached the Sun, but my team did try and get as close as possible without compromising health regulations.
Basically, the Sun is a medium-sized star, with the planets in the Solar System (including Earth) revolving around it. Additionally, it’s constantly emitting UV, gamma and X-ray radiation from the solar flares that gracefully dance on the face of the Sun.

Tourist “hot-spots”. Literally.

As stated earlier, solar flares are a wonderful sight if you ever get close enough to the Sun. It’s basically an acceleration of charged particles toward the plasma on the Sun’s surface due to magnetic connections, resulting in a sudden discharge of energy from the Sun’s surface in the form of a volcanic eruption, as seen above.
On another note, you can click on the image to watch some footage taken by NASA in 2011 of an actual solar flare that occurred (our video cameras melted before we realised how ridiculously close we were to potentially getting hit by a solar flare. Whew.)

Another marvel to see while you’re decently close to the sun is the renowned Sunspots. These dark areas of the Sun are formed by concentrated magnetic fields on the Sun, which generally have cooler temperatures than the rest of the Sun (about 3000 – 4500 K).
Why is this so fascinating? It seems that sunspots actually move around on the Sun’s surface by its magnetic field acting on the Sun’s own magnetic generation, causing the sunspot to shift across the Sun.

Conclusion

If the Sun isn’t right for you, you still have time to reconsider; in fact, you have up to 5.4 billion years to reconsider your options, until the Sun bursts into a supernova and become a red giant. In any case, the Sun is always a fine option for new and uncharted paradise, just as long as you can withstand the excessively high heat and radiation levels.
And even then, just floating around in space with a good view of the Sun is a nice second option if you can’t afford getting that close to the Sun. So get out there and get your Vitamin D straight from the source.

References

You can read all sorts of stuff on the Sun, but how many of those sources can take the heat? Get it, because the Sun is hot and -- Look, here's a bunch of informational links about the Sun.
Puns - Don't hate; Appreciate.

Sun (2014). Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun.

The Sun (2013). Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://nineplanets.org/sol.html.
Sun: Overview (n.d.) Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Sun.

Solar Flare (2014). Retrieved April 23, 2014, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_flare#Cause.