• Question: what is the suns hemisphere?

    Asked by csubero20 to Sarah, Will on 22 Jun 2012.
    • Photo: Will Reynolds

      Will Reynolds answered on 22 Jun 2012:

      Hi csubero20! Hemisphere literally means ‘half a sphere’ so the sun has two hemispheres, one on the top and one on the bottom. The earth also has hemispheres which we call the northern hemisphere where we live and has the USA, canada, europe, russia and part of africa. And the southern hemisphere with south america, australia, new zealand, south asia and the other half of africa. These hemispheres are seperated by the equator and have opposite seasons. Hope this helps! Thanks for your question.

    • Photo: Sarah Martin

      Sarah Martin answered on 22 Jun 2012:

      Hi csubero20,

      Will’s right – but a hemisphere can also be anywhere you define it! So on Earth we also talk about the Western hemisphere and the Eastern hemisphere, which are just separated down the arbitrarily chosen line through Greenwich on our side, and the international date line on the other!
      A bit like this:

      You could cut the Sun into hemispheres in whichever direction you like, as long as you have a big enough knife that doesn’t melt!

      🙂 Sarah

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