It is complicated to say how fast the Sun is spinning but depending whereabouts on the Sun you are looking at it takes between 24 and 38 days to spin around. We will begin with the core and work our way out through the layers. As Chile and Argentina witnessed the total solar eclipse on Dec. 14, 2020, a little tiny speck was flying past the Sun – a recently discovered comet. There are many asteroids and comets that go around the Sun, too. The 10 most abundant gases in the Sun’s visible surface layer are listed in Table 1. Astronomers have found that the solar atmosphere changes from almost perfectly transparent to almost completely opaque in a distance of just over 400 kilometers; it is this thin region that we call the photosphere, a word that comes from the Greek for “light sphere.” When astronomers speak of the “diameter” of the Sun, they mean the size of the region surrounded by the photosphere. The trouble is, that the vaporisation would occur whilst the contracting Sun was still fully convective, effectively mixing everything up throughout the Sun before nuclear reactions began. The plasma at the bottom of the convective zone is extremely hot, and it bubbles to the surface where it loses its heat to space. (And, as we will see, the composition of the Sun and the stars is much more typical of the makeup of the universe than the odd concentration of heavier elements that characterizes our planet. Until this century, the chromosphere was visible only when the photosphere was concealed by the Moon during a total solar eclipse (see the chapter on Earth, Moon, and Sky). The region of the Sun’s atmosphere that lies immediately above the photosphere is called the chromosphere. When such particles reach the vicinity of Earth, they produce auroras, which are strongest near Earth’s magnetic poles. What We See Your friend arrives late and calls you on your cell phone to ask you to join her at the edge of the crowd. The Sun is a hot ball of glowing gases. Figure 2. Visit NASA Space Place for more kid-friendly facts. Figure 8. The right image shows an irregular-shaped sunspot and granules on the Sun’s surface, seen with the Swedish Solar Telescope on August 22, 2003. The light generated in the core is transported through the radiative zone very slowly, since the high density of matter in this region means a photon cannot travel too far without encountering a particle, causing it to change direction and lose some energy. In fact, the Sun is so hot that many of the atoms in it are ionized, that is, stripped of one or more of their electrons. As the particles strike molecules of air, they cause them to glow, producing beautiful curtains of light called the auroras, or the northern and southern lights (Figure 11), Figure 11. 4 The fact that our Sun and the stars all have similar compositions and are made up of mostly hydrogen and helium was first shown in a brilliant thesis in 1925 by Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, the first woman to get a PhD in astronomy in the United States (Figure 2). Earth’s air is generally transparent. More importantly, current gas models of the sun simply do NOT explain the video images we see through SOHO and TRACE. Astronomers estimate that the Sun is losing about 10 million tons of material each year through this wind. Hot coronal gas, on the other hand, is present mainly where magnetic fields have trapped and concentrated it. Coronagraph: This image of the Sun was taken March 2, 2016. Measurements show that the centers of the granules are hotter than the intergranular regions by 50 to 100 K. Figure 6. It is probably only a few tens of kilometers thick. In a new study, scientists looked at sunspots at low resolution to simulate a view of distant stars. Site Manager: The Sun has inspired mythological stories in cultures around the world, including those of the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs of Mexico, Native American tribes of North and South America, the Chinese, and many others. While this amount of lost mass seems large by Earth standards, it is completely insignificant for the Sun. Social Media Lead: Baltimore Ravens news and analysis from the Baltimore Sun, Maryland's No. You decide that friendship is worth more than a prime spot, and so you work your way out through the dense crowd to meet her. 10 Need-to-Know Things About the Sun (credit: Smithsonian Institution). Figure 7. Magnetosphere, and Moon Status: The Sun does not have a solid surface or continents like Earth, nor does it have a solid core (Figure 1). The sun and its atmosphere consist of several zones or layers. 7 Its brighter parts can now be photographed with a special instrument—a coronagraph—that removes the Sun’s glare from the image with an occulting disk (a circular piece of material held so it is just in front of the Sun). The corona extends millions of kilometers above the photosphere and emits about half as much light as the full moon. ), Figure 5. These earthquake-like events release acoustic energy in the form of waves that ripple along the Sun’s surface. X-ray and extreme ultraviolet pictures, however, show that the corona has loops, plumes, and both bright and dark regions. Because the Sun is not solid, it does not have a defined outer boundary. The core of the Sun is considered to extend from the center to about 0.2 to 0.25 of solar radius. The claustrophobic South American showdown against tentacled mistress of … Outside the Sun, we can observe only those photons that are emitted into the solar photosphere, where the density of atoms is sufficiently low and the photons can finally escape from the Sun without colliding with another atom or ion. It takes around 8 minutes from the moment that it leaves the sun to reach our planet. Also shown is an enlarged image of a group of sunspots; the size of Earth is shown for comparison. The Sun is the largest object within our solar system, comprising 99.8% of the system’s mass. The Sun is not solid or a typical gas. Studies of its spectrum show the corona to be very low in density. The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, climate, radiation belts and aurorae. Pluto is a dwarf planet beyond Neptune. The first state is a solid and it is the … In this section, we describe the huge changes that occur in the Sun’s extensive interior and atmosphere, and the dynamic and violent eruptions that occur daily in its outer layers. Many spacecraft constantly observe the Sun, helping us keep an eye on space weather that can affect satellites and astronauts. The radiation from the photosphere appears as sunlight as it reaches Earth. The planets are: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. The smaller inner circle is where the Sun would be if it were visible in this image. It is converted into energy in the sun's core. It’s classified as a yellow dwarf star. Let’s begin by asking what the solar atmosphere is made of. It took until 1895 for helium to be discovered on our planet. More importantly, current gas models of the sun simply do NOT explain the video images we see through SOHO and TRACE. Facts about the Sun, which is a ball of gas and has no solid surface. The Sun is a hot ball of glowing gases. One of the most remarkable discoveries about the Sun’s atmosphere is that it produces a stream of charged particles (mainly protons and electrons) that we call the solar wind. However, we now know that while this idea of layers—photosphere, chromosphere, transition region, corona—describes the big picture fairly well, the Sun’s atmosphere is really more complicated, with hot and cool regions intermixed. It was 3 years after her thesis that other studies proved beyond a doubt that the enormous abundance of hydrogen and helium in the Sun is indeed real. From the inside out, the solar interior consists of: the core (the central region where nuclear reactions consume hydrogen to form helium. Though massive, the Sun still isn’t as large as other types of stars. It is much the same as falling through a cloud while skydiving. Scientists have developed a new model that predicted seven out of nine of the Sun’s biggest recent flares. The energy is given off in the form of solar wind, UV rays, other radiation, heat, light, and possibly EM Pulse. Conditions at the Sun's core (approximately the inner 25% of its radius) are extreme. Something similar happens in the Sun. The Sun’s visible surface sometimes has dark sunspots, which are areas of intense magnetic activity that can lead to solar explosions. It turns out that the Sun contains the same elements as Earth but not in the same proportions. The Sun’s visible surface sometimes has dark sunspots, which are areas of intense magnetic activity that can lead to solar explosions. ), the radiative zone (extends outward from the outer edge of the core to base of the … At the equator, the Sun spins around once about every 25 days, but at its poles the Sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days. Appropriately, the part of the Sun where the rapid temperature rise occurs is called the transition region. We … It gives us light so we can see. The Sun’s core is extremely dense and is the source of all of its energy. There are lots of stars, but the Sun is the closest one to Earth. It is the center of our solar system. We call that an orbit. 2 The Sun, our star, has several layers beneath the visible surface: the core, radiative zone, and convective zone. Large dark regions of the corona that are relatively cool and quiet are called coronal holes (Figure 10). Coronal Hole: The dark area visible near the Sun’s south pole on this Solar Dynamics Observer spacecraft image is a coronal hole. Just as bright city lights make it difficult to see faint starlight, so too does the intense light from the photosphere hide the faint light from the corona. From the inside out, the solar interior consists of: the core (the central region where nuclear reactions consume hydrogen to form helium. 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