The Sun

Our closestr star; the sun. Most people don’t really know what the sun does or what it is made out of. Some people don’t even know that the sun is a star. Well since the formation of the sun the earth and other planets would not have existed if it wasn’t for the sun’s warmth and brightness. What’s funny though is that the sun is only slightly denser than water, so it can almost float. The sun is a very perplexing and interesting topic. There is so many ways people believe how the sun was formed and how it’s going to die.

The ancients thought that the sun was the worlds’ number one source for everything, telling time, plants and crops were planted around the sun’s phases. They worshiped the sun and everything that had to do with it. The Egyptians were the first ones to really worship the sun. Before Christ the Egyptians started using a 365 day calendar based on the solar phases. And even today we use the same form as the Egyptians calendar.

The sun exists because of fusion. Fusion happens in the core and the minimum temperature that fusion can happen is 16,000,000 degrees Calvin, which means the core is very hot. Fusion is the process by which 2 atoms combine to make energy. This makes the sun and other stars “shine.” For the sun it combines hydrogen atoms and converts it to helium. Every second the sun spends 700 billion tons of hydrogen protons fusing together, but only .7% of that energy turns into light.

Just outside of the core is a layer called the radioactive layer. The temperature of this layer is 4 million degrees Calvin. The density of the radioactive layer is much less than that of the core, but it contains 60% of the sun’s mass and 90% of the volume. The core keeps so hot because the radioactive layer puts the pressure on the core. The radioactive layer is so hot that it’s almost transparent. After the fusion starts at the core that energy moves in huge cells several kilometers in diameter. Finally that energy passes the radioactive layer and starts passing through the rest of the sun.

Next is the convection layer. Convection is how energy moves from the middle of the sun to the outer layers of the sun. You can really see how convection works by looking at boiling water and watching the bubbles go from the bottom of the pot to the top and the bubbles represent energy. The convection layer, like the radioactive layer, is very hot but not as hot as the radioactive layer, which makes it not as transparent.

There are many layers to the sun other than the core. The photosphere is the layer of the sun that you see when you look at it. Each square centimeter of the photosphere shines off as much light as a 6,000 watt lamp. Sun spots happen on the photosphere and what sun spots are is when the magnetic field is much higher than other spots. This makes the sun spots look like a darker color because the temperature of sun spots is much lower than other spots. A solar spot can be as big as the earth or even bigger!

The next layer of the sun is called the chromosphere. It lies just outside of the photosphere and is almost completely transparent. The temperature of the chromosphere is 4,300 degrees Calvin and sharply increases to the edge which is then 8,300 degrees Calvin.

If you can see in the picture on the left there is a solar flare on the chromosphere. A solar flare is when the plasma is taken along the magnetic field lines.

After the chromosphere is what we know of as the suns’ atmosphere or the corona. But because the corona is so thin you can only see it during a solar eclipse (when the moon blocks the sun). The temperature of the corona is so hot that it gives off x-ray wavelengths. What is suspicious though is why the surface of the sun is cooler than the outer layers of the sun.

In between the sun and the earth is what we call, solar wind. Solar wind is a constant stream of particles that flies from the sun. These particles fly at a very high speed, 450 kilometers per second.

The solar wind blows gas and dust

backward