THE UNIQUENESS OF THE SUN 2
The sun has a bright surface called the photosphere - photo, meaning light.
This is the lowest layer of the sun's atmosphere that emits the light we see. It is about 500 km in thickness, although most of the light comes from its lowest third. This layer or surface has a temperature of 6,000 degrees Celsius. It appears darker near the edge of the sun's disk due to greater absorption of light by the sun's atmosphere - a process known as limb darkening. Understand that the sun also has its atmosphere, just like the earth.
Other layers (atmospheres) of the sun include the chromosphere and the corona, beyond which we have the solar wind. They are the outer layers. The chromosphere is hotter with a temperature up to 19,725 degrees Celsius, and is apparently made up entirely of spiky structures known as spicules typically some 1,000 km across and up to 10,000 km.
The corona is above and sheds most of its light as ultraviolet rays. At the top is the super-hot corona, which is made of structures such as loops and streams of ionized gas. The corona generally ranges from 900,000 F (500,000 C) to 10.8 million F (6 million C) and can even reach tens of millions of degrees when a solar flare occurs. Matter from the corona is blown off as the solar wind.
The sun has a bright surface called the photosphere - photo, meaning light.
This is the lowest layer of the sun's atmosphere that emits the light we see. It is about 500 km in thickness, although most of the light comes from its lowest third. This layer or surface has a temperature of 6,000 degrees Celsius. It appears darker near the edge of the sun's disk due to greater absorption of light by the sun's atmosphere - a process known as limb darkening. Understand that the sun also has its atmosphere, just like the earth.
Other layers (atmospheres) of the sun include the chromosphere and the corona, beyond which we have the solar wind. They are the outer layers. The chromosphere is hotter with a temperature up to 19,725 degrees Celsius, and is apparently made up entirely of spiky structures known as spicules typically some 1,000 km across and up to 10,000 km.
The corona is above and sheds most of its light as ultraviolet rays. At the top is the super-hot corona, which is made of structures such as loops and streams of ionized gas. The corona generally ranges from 900,000 F (500,000 C) to 10.8 million F (6 million C) and can even reach tens of millions of degrees when a solar flare occurs. Matter from the corona is blown off as the solar wind.
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