That giant flaming star in the sky does rotate, but moves at a much slower pace than the Earth.
It takes 24 hours for the Earth to make a full rotation, but since the sun isn’t a solid object like a planet, its rotation is harder to pinpoint.
“Since the sun is a ball of gas/plasma, it does not have to rotate rigidly like the solid planets and moons do,” according to NASA.
The phenomenon of solar flares is nothing new. We are already well aware of the 11 year solar cycle that sees this fiery cosmic show ebb and flow and this has been going on for millions of years now.
Currently, we are heading towards another solar maximum; a period that sees a spike up in the solar flare and sunspot activity. And NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory has just captured what it dubs as a graceful solar eruption.
Let me start with the sun. Suppose you were to watch the sun (but not look directly at it; that is a bad thing) over the course of a day. Also suppose you were to observe the sun’s motion on different days of the year. Oh, I get it. You’re too busy and too impatient to do this. Well, there is a simple solution. Download and install some type of astronomy software. I recommend Stellarium. It’s free and it works on all the major operating systems. With Stellarium, you can enter a location and a time and it will show you the sky. This way you can play around with the views on different days without having to wait half a year. Instant sky gratification.
Let me show you the sun at different times of the day for my location on both Dec. 21 and June 21. This image might look crazy, but I tried to show all the locations at the same time.
Dispatches From The Front 