Linda Kossler, age 9, of Holland Patent, N.Y., for her question:

How hot is the sun?

The face of the sun is estimated to be ‑about 6,000 degrees Centigrade. This is hot enough to vaporize the metal parts of an automobile. The center of a sunspot is somewhat cooler than the surface of the sun surrounding it. But it is still hot enough to turn an iron poker into gas.

The seething heart of the sun is even hotter than its face. Of course, no one has been in there with a thermometer. An instrument called the spectrograph is used to take the surface temperature of the sun but we c^n only guess about the inside.

Scientists know that tremendous heat is necessary to generate the sun's atomic power. And most experts believe that the heart of old Sol seethes away at soma 20 million degrees Centigrade. Whew, Gale certainly is lucky to be about 93 million miles away from this seething atomic furnace.