I’m writing a work where characters are on a fictional planet not in our solar system. I wanted to refer to the planet’s star/source of light as “the sun” still, but is that correct? Is the sun as we know it the only “sun”, or is sun simply a word to describe our source of light?
In: Planetary Science
It’s kind of both, largely because language is imprecise and we haven’t had a need yet to officially decide if our sun is the “Sun” or not. In popular culture it’s not rare to hear whatever star a planet orbits being referred to as its sun (Or suns, if the planet orbits a multiple star system like the planet Tattoine in the Star Wars universe).
In situations like that it’s not uncommon for the sun that Earth orbits to be called Sol, though really Sol is just Latin for Sun so it’s still a little vague. For story purposes it’s probably reasonable to refer to “sun” as the star a planet orbits, though other stars from ours will likely need a better proper name than “Sun but in Latin”.
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