Every time I try to comprehend the sun as it actually is -- its size and composition -- I end up completely boggled and unnerved. A vast and uncaring ball of plasma, mostly hydrogen, supporting billions of years of fusion reactions, so big that the orbit of the planet I live on causes only the slightest wobble in its position; it's no wonder the ancients worshiped the sun. There's nothing about it I can begin to grasp except by analogy.
Thanks to you, and to the GP. I do enjoy the analogies! I think the absolutely brain-crushing thing about objects of astronomic magnitude is trying to reverse the log-transform we use to make sense of them. For me it produces a sense of vertigo, like standing at the top of a cliff.
