Big Idea 3.3

Introductory: A younger learner (K-5), or a learner new to the subject matter.

Quick Facts

How was the Sun born?

  • Educator Background

    Like the life cycles of plants and animals, and even rocks, all stars, including the Sun, have a life cycle. The Sun was born 4.7 billion years ago, made from a stellar nebula, which is basically a star nursery. This is a great place for stars to be born because there is lots of dust and gas and all the things needed to make a planetary system. But just like the cycles on Earth, where matter is recycled over and over again (e.g. a dead animal decomposes and provides nutrients to a growing tree) stars die and provide material for the birth of new stars.

  • Learning Constraints

    At this level, students know the Sun is a star (5-ESS1-1) and are exploring the life cycles of organisms on Earth (3-LS1-1). Students can understand that events (on Earth and in space) can happen on a longer time scale, too long for humans to observe (2-ESS1-1), which will help students better comprehend the time scale relating to the lives of stars. In grade 4, students continue to explore bigger time scales when they examine rock formations on Earth (4-ESS1-1).

  • Connect to Heliophysics

    Connect to the Sun by emphasizing that the Sun formed about 4.7 billion years ago in a giant, spinning cloud of gas and dust called a nebula. A nebula is where stars are born. Over time, gravity brings all of that gas and dust in the nebula together, where it heats up, and starts to spin. The material spins faster and faster until it is flattened into a pancake-like disk. Most of that material became our Sun, at the center, and the extra material formed the planets around it.

  • Extend Exploration

    Extend student exploration by investigating space dust. Is space very dusty? Space is dusty because ancient stars become so cool that dust grains can condense out of the star's outer layers, like rain condensing out of clouds on Earth. These dust grains are then driven out into space and become part of stellar nurseries.

  • Differentiate for Beginner Learners

    Support younger students by thinking about how you can't make something from nothing, which is why we see cycles on Earth and in the universe.

  • Differentiate for More Advanced Learners

    Challenge students at the next level by having them investigate how the Sun will end its life.

Featured Introductory Resources

Explore this guiding question with these featured resources.

Orange sun with colorful planets trailing out to one side.

Lesson Plans

Formation of the Solar System: Birth of Worlds

Concentric disks around a bright focal point.

Digital Resource

How Planets are Born Animation

A set of hands tearing apart blue modeling clay over a paper plate with other pieces of modeling clay on it in purple, green, and red.

Hands-on Activity

Model How the Solar System Was Formed

This artist’s concept compares two types of typical, planet-forming disks around newborn, Sun-like stars. On the left is a compact disk with no rings or gaps. On the right is an extended disk with rings and gaps. The compact disk is considerably smaller than the extended disk. Both the right and left illustrations have a bright yellow center indicative of a newly formed star. In both, the yellow center is surrounded by a swirling, orange disk. On the left, the compact disk appears unbroken by any gaps or rings. On the right, the extended disk features two, thick, mottled, orange rings surrounded by two, large, almost black gaps. The central portion of the extended disk has an outer region of orange surrounding a bright yellow center.

Article

NASA Model Describes Nearby Star which Resembles Ours in its Youth