Solar neutrinos. Astrophysical aspects

This paper is a short pedagogical introduction to some aspects of the solar neutrino problem. The basic attention is concentrated on a qualitative consideration of the pp and CNO reactions responsible for hydrogen burning in the Sun, starting from an elementary derivation of the formula for the non-resonant thermonuclear reaction rate. We outline the physical content of the standard solar models, the problem of chemical composition of the Sun, expected neutrino energy spectrum, radial distributions of the neutrino fluxes in the Sun, and uncertainties in the predicted neutrino event rates.