A sun visor is a component of an automobile located on the interior just above the windshield (also known as the windscreen).
Most cars have two sun visors, one for the driver's side and a second for the passenger's side, with the rear-view mirror often mounted in between the two sun visors. Each visor can be lowered to help block light from the sun entering through the windshield. They can also be turned to the front side window to reduce lateral sun exposure.
Many sun visors also incorporate a vanity mirror for the passenger's convenience. In some cases, a flip up cover over the mirror automatically turns on the vanity lights, which can be adjusted with a sliding dimmer control (see image).
Recently, sun visors incorporating LCD screens, DVD players and other devices have become available as an aftermarket modification. They are also available as an option or standard item from manufacturers with garage door opener systems such as HomeLink built into the visors.
Exterior sun visors are available for trucks as cab visors.
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields. It has a diameter of about 1,392,000 km, about 109 times that of Earth, and its mass (about 2×1030 kilograms, 330,000 times that of Earth) accounts for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Chemically, about three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, while the rest is mostly helium. The remainder (1.69%, which nonetheless equals 5,628 times the mass of Earth) consists of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron, among others.
The Sun's stellar classification, based on spectral class, is G2V, and is informally designated as a yellow dwarf, because its visible radiation is most intense in the yellow-green portion of the spectrum and although its color is white, from the surface of the Earth it may appear yellow because of atmospheric scattering of blue light. In the spectral class label, G2 indicates its surface temperature of approximately 5778 K (5505 °C), and V indicates that the Sun, like most stars, is a main-sequence star, and thus generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen each second. Once regarded by astronomers as a small and relatively insignificant star, the Sun is now thought to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy, most of which are red dwarfs. The absolute magnitude of the Sun is +4.83; however, as the star closest to Earth, the Sun is the brightest object in the sky with an apparent magnitude of −26.74. The Sun's hot corona continuously expands in space creating the solar wind, a stream of charged particles that extends to the heliopause at roughly 100 astronomical units. The bubble in the interstellar medium formed by the solar wind, the heliosphere, is the largest continuous structure in the Solar System.
A visor (also spelled vizor) is a surface that protects the eyes, such as shading them from the sun or other bright light or protecting them from objects.
Nowadays many visors are transparent, but before strong transparent substances such as polycarbonate were invented, visors were opaque like a mask with small holes to see and breathe through, such as:
Some modern devices called visors are similar, for example:
Types of modern transparent visors include:
The word vizard (sometimes visard) is used in Shakespearean English to refer to a visor, a mask, or a disguise (ex. "There, then, that vizard, that superfluous case, that hid the worse and show'd the better face." -- Love's Labors Lost V.ii.387)
Richard Mark Hammond (born 19 December 1969) is an English broadcaster, writer, and journalist most noted for co-hosting the car programme Top Gear with Jeremy Clarkson and James May, as well as presenting series 1–4 of Brainiac: Science Abuse on Sky 1. Since 2009, Hammond has co-hosted Total Wipeout with Amanda Byram on BBC One which has since been cancelled.
Hammond is currently presenting Planet Earth Live alongside Julia Bradbury.
Hammond was born in Solihull and is the grandson of workers in the Birmingham automobile industry. In the mid-1980s Hammond moved with his family (mother Eileen, father Alan, and younger brothers Andrew, writer of the 'Crypt' Series, and Nicholas) to the North Yorkshire cathedral city of Ripon where his father ran a probate business in the market square. Originally a pupil of Solihull School, a fee-paying boys' independent school, he moved to Ripon Grammar School, and from 1987 to 1989 attended Harrogate College of Art and Technology. After his graduation he worked for several radio stations, including Radio Cleveland, Radio York, Radio Cumbria, Radio Leeds, Radio Newcastle and Radio Lancashire, before auditioning for Top Gear.