Although some of the terms in that table may be unfamiliar to you right now, you will get to know them as you read further. This structure of the photosphere is called granulation (see Figure 15.6). Temperatures within the core can reach over 10,000 Fahrenheit and the layer contains mostly iron and nickel elements with heavier mineral deposits of gold, silver, platinum, palladium and tungsten. Core. Except where otherwise noted, textbooks on this site The right image shows an irregular-shaped sunspot and granules on the Sunâs surface, seen with the Swedish Solar Telescope on August 22, 2003. The âwhiskersâ at the edge of the Sun are spicules, jets of gas that shoot material up from the Sunâs surface and disappear after only a few minutes. All this while, your efforts are not visible to your waiting friend at the edge. Granules, which are typically 700 to 1000 kilometers in diameter (about the width of Texas), appear as bright areas surrounded by narrow, darker (cooler) regions. The core is approximately 20% of the size of the solar interior and is thought to have a temperature of approximately 15 million K, making it the hottest part of the Sun. As explained in Radiation and Spectra, we can use a starâs absorption line spectrum to determine what elements are present. On this graph, temperature is shown increasing upward, and height above the photosphere is shown increasing to the right. It is probably only a few tens of kilometers thick. In fact, the Sun is 1% oxygen; and everything else comes out of that last 1%. However, the idea that the simplest light gasesâhydrogen and heliumâwere the most abundant elements in stars was so unexpected and so shocking that she assumed her analysis of the data must be wrong. The lifetime of an individual granule is only 5 to 10 minutes. Because they are transparent to most visible radiation and emit only a small amount of light, these outer layers are difficult to observe. The Sun is so hot that you would be vaporized long before you reached the photosphere. Appropriately, the part of the Sun where the rapid temperature rise occurs is called the transition region. It's our mission to give every student the tools they need to be successful in the classroom. (credit: JAXA/NASA/Hinode), This image of the Sun was taken March 2, 2016. The 10 most abundant gases in the Sunâs visible surface layer are listed in Table 15.2. Layers of the Sun. The corona extends millions of kilometers above the photosphere and emits about half as much light as the full moon. 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. Time-lapse movies of this filament showed that it gradually heated as it moved through the corona. Unlike the outer core, the inner core exists in a solid form due to the increased pressure which solidifies iron in the layer. The low corona, which is very close to the surface of the Sun, has a particle density of 1011/m3 (Earth's atmosphere near sea level has a particle density of about 2x1025/m3). Where did these elements come from? In the nineteenth century, scientists observed a spectral line at 530.3 nanometers in the Sunâs outer atmosphere, called the corona (a layer we will discuss in a minute.) All Rights ReservedDisclaimer: This is not an official NASA site. 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. Want to cite, share, or modify this book? Like the chromosphere, the corona was first observed during total eclipses (Figure 15.10). This is how we first discovered that the Sunâs atmosphere had a temperature of more than a million degrees. The dark area visible near the Sunâs south pole on this Solar Dynamics Observer spacecraft image is a coronal hole. Opinions and views expressed are by The Sun Today. Note the very rapid increase in temperature over a very short distance in the transition region between the chromosphere and the corona.
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