An image of a portion of the transition region of the corona, showing a filament, or ribbon-like structure made up of many individual threads. The claustrophobic South American showdown against tentacled mistress of … The corona extends so far into space—far past Earth—that here on our planet, we are technically living in the Sun’s atmosphere. The smaller inner circle is where the Sun would be if it were visible in this image. This is how we first discovered that the Sun’s atmosphere had a temperature of more than a million degrees. The Sun is neither a solid nor a gas but is actually plasma. The bright granules are columns of hotter gases rising at speeds of 2 to 3 kilometers per second from below the photosphere. From knowledge scientists have gained about the sun this century we know about a phenomena called sun spots.Scientists are trying to understand what causes these large spots on the sun; why they happen and what effect they have on the sun's activity. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, or SDO, has experienced its first lunar transit of the year. Most of the gas — 91 percent — is hydrogen. Many spacecraft constantly observe the Sun, helping us keep an eye on space weather that can affect satellites and astronauts. Sun Shines in High-Energy X-rays (One big difference between these two scenarios, however, is temperature. 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. Examine that table and notice that the composition of the Sun’s outer layer is very different from Earth’s crust, where we live. Some of the basic characteristics of the Sun are listed in Table 1. This energy is in the form of photons, which make their way slowly toward the solar surface. Similar effects are seen in the gas planets. 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. Experts from NASA and NOAA discuss their analysis and predictions for the new solar cycle. Although the solar wind material is very, very rarified (i.e., extremely low density), the Sun has an enormous surface area. Pluto is a dwarf planet beyond Neptune. (Scientists call such a hot ionized gas a plasma.). Though it is special to us, there are billions of stars like our Sun scattered across the Milky Way galaxy. From the inside out, the solar interior consists of: the core (the central region where nuclear reactions consume hydrogen to form helium. The Sun is made up of hydrogen and helium. In the nineteenth century, scientists observed a spectral line at 530.3 nanometers in the Sun’s outer atmosphere, called the corona (a layer we will discuss in a minute.) The radiation from the photosphere appears as sunlight as it reaches Earth. But on a smoggy day in many cities, it can become opaque, which prevents us from seeing through it past a certain point. Figure 10. The Sun's core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius). All the other chemical elements (including those we know and love in our own bodies, such as carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen) make up only 2% of our star. Lots of smaller worlds orbit the Sun. Appropriately, the part of the Sun where the rapid temperature rise occurs is called the transition region. The Sun’s visible surface sometimes has dark sunspots, which are areas of intense magnetic activity that can lead to solar explosions. Your friend arrives late and calls you on your cell phone to ask you to join her at the edge of the crowd. The energy moves outward through the … At the equator, the Sun spins once about every 25 days, but at its poles the Sun rotates once on its axis every 35 Earth days. 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. At the surface of Earth, we are protected to some degree from the solar wind by our atmosphere and Earth’s magnetic field (see Earth as a Planet). When such particles reach the vicinity of Earth, they produce auroras, which are strongest near Earth’s magnetic poles. The Sun’s Atmosphere: Composite image showing the three components of the solar atmosphere: the photosphere or surface of the Sun taken in ordinary light; the chromosphere, imaged in the light of the strong red spectral line of hydrogen (H-alpha); and the corona as seen with X-rays. Earth’s air is generally transparent. Biggest NASA Space Place: All About the Sun ›. Coronal Hole: The dark area visible near the Sun’s south pole on this Solar Dynamics Observer spacecraft image is a coronal hole. 3 Eight planets move around the Sun. There are lots of stars, but the Sun is the closest one to Earth. (credit: Smithsonian Institution). Today, students are probably most familiar with it as the light gas used to inflate balloons, although it turns out to be the second-most abundant element in the universe. The Sun is so hot that you would be vaporized long before you reached the photosphere. Kristen Erickson So too photons making their way through the Sun are constantly bumping into atoms, changing direction, working their way slowly outward, and becoming visible only when they reach the atmosphere of the Sun where the density of atoms is too low to block their outward progress. Scientists have developed a new model that predicted seven out of nine of the Sun’s biggest recent flares. 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