The Sun By Miss Kay The Sun The

The Sun By: Miss Kay

The Sun • The Sun is the star at the center of our solar system and is responsible for the Earth’s climate and weather. • The sun and its atmosphere are divided into several zones and layers: The solar interior, from the inside out, is made up of the core, radiative zone and the convective zone. The solar atmosphere above that consists of the photosphere, chromosphere, a transition region and the corona.

Basic Facts • Age: 4. 6 Billion Years Diameter: 1, 392, 684 km Circumference at Equator: 4, 370, 005. 6 km Mass: 1, 989, 100, 000, 000 billion kg (333, 060 x Earth) Surface Temperature: 5500 °C

The Structure

The Core • Conditions at the Sun's core (approximately the inner 25% of its radius) are extreme. The temperature is 15. 6 million Kelvin and the pressure is 250 billion atmospheres. At the center of the core the Sun's density is more than 150 times that of water. • Although it only makes up roughly 2 percent of the sun's volume, it is almost 15 times the density of lead and holds nearly half of the sun's mass.

The Radiation Zone • This zone extends from the core to 70 percent of the way to the sun's surface, making up 32 percent of the sun's volume and 48 percent of its mass. Light from the core gets scattered in this zone, so that a single photon often may take a million years to pass through.

The Convection Zone • The convection zone reaches up to the sun's surface, and makes up 66 percent of the sun's volume but only a little more than 2 percent of its mass. Roiling "convection cells" of gas dominate this zone.

The Photosphere • The photosphere is the lowest layer of the sun's atmosphere, and emits the light we see. It is about 300 miles (500 kilometers) thick, although most of the light comes from its lowest third. Temperatures there range from 11, 000 degrees F (6, 125 degrees C) at bottom to 7, 460 degrees F (4, 125 degrees C) at top.

Sunspots • Sunspots are "cool" regions, only 3800 K (they look dark only by comparison with the surrounding regions). Sunspots can be very large, as much as 50, 000 km in diameter. Sunspots are caused by complicated and not very well understood interactions with the Sun's magnetic field.

The Chromosphere • A small region known as the chromosphere lies above the photosphere. • This zone goes up to 35, 500 degrees F (19, 725 degrees C) and is apparently made up entirely of spiky structures known as spicules typically some 600 miles (1, 000 kilometers) across and up to 6, 000 miles (10, 000 kilometers) high.

The Transition Region • This region is a few hundred to a few thousand miles or kilometers thick, which is heated by the corona above it and sheds most of its light as ultraviolet rays

The Corona • The highly rarefied region above the chromosphere, called the corona, extends millions of kilometers into space but is visible only during a total solar eclipse. • This region is made of structures such as loops and streams of ionized gas. The corona generally ranges from 900, 000 degrees F (500, 000 degrees C) to 10. 8 million degrees F (6 million degrees 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.

More Interesting Facts • One million Earths could fit inside the Sun • Eventually, the Sun will consume the Earth • The Sun contains 99. 86% of the mass in the Solar System and is by far the largest object in the solar system. • The Sun is an almost perfect sphere • Light from the Sun takes eight minutes to reach Earth • The Sun travels at 220 kilometers per second • The temperature inside the Sun can reach 15 million degrees Celsius

References • http: //space-facts. com/the-sun/ • http: //nineplanets. org/sol. html • http: //www. space. com/58 -the-sun-formationfacts-and-characteristics. html