What is the photosphere made up of?

plasmaconvection cells called granules—cells of plasma each approximately 1000 kilometers in diameter with hot rising plasma in the center and cooler plasma falling in the narrow spaces between them, flowing at velocities of 7 kilometers per second.

What is the photosphere layer?

Photosphere – The photosphere is the deepest layer of the Sun that we can observe directly. It reaches from the surface visible at the center of the solar disk to about 250 miles (400 km) above that.

Is photosphere a solid?

The photosphere is the visible surface of the Sun that we are most familiar with. Since the Sun is a ball of gas, this is not a solid surface but is actually a layer about 100 km thick (very, very, thin compared to the 700,000 km radius of the Sun).

What are the 3 layers of the Sun inside the photosphere?

The main part of the Sun has three layers: the core, radiative zone, and convection zone. The Sun’s atmosphere also has three layers: the photosphere, the chromosphere, and the corona. Nuclear fusion of hydrogen in the core of the Sun produces tremendous amounts of energy that radiate out from the Sun.

What is the surface of the Sun the photosphere like?

The photosphere is the visible “surface” of the Sun. The Sun is a giant ball of plasma (electrified gas), so it doesn’t have a distinct, solid surface like Earth.

What is the Sun’s photosphere quizlet?

Photosphere. Definition: The photosphere is the visible surface of the sun. Sentence with extra information: The photosphere is the innermost layer of the sun. Chromosphere. Definition: The chromosphere is outside of the photosphere and is approximately 2,500 km thick and has a temperature of nearly 30,000 Kelvin.

What two elements make up the Sun?

Oxygen: A critical element

Despite the controversy, everyone agrees on the basics: The sun consists mainly of hydrogen and helium, the two lightest elements. It generates energy at its center through nuclear reactions that convert hydrogen into helium.

How is helium made in the Sun’s core?

The core is the only place where nuclear fusion reactions can happen. The sun’s other layers are heated from the nuclear energy created there. Protons of hydrogen atoms violently collide and fuse, or join together, to create a helium atom.

What is a filament on the Sun quizlet?

A filament is a dark curve seen above the sun’s photosphere, a prominence is the side view of a filament. What are solar flares? a violent eruption on the sun’s surface.

What is a filament on the Sun?

Filaments are actually huge arcs of plasma (electrified gas) in the Sun’s atmosphere. They look dark because they are not as hot as the Sun’s surface behind them. Filaments are held in place by powerful magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere.

What is the filament that extends from the photosphere to the corona?

A solar prominence (also known as a filament when viewed against the solar disk) is a large, bright feature extending outward from the Sun’s surface. Prominences are anchored to the Sun’s surface in the photosphere, and extend outwards into the Sun’s hot outer atmosphere, called the corona.

What is the difference between a filament and a prominence?

When viewed spewing from the edge of the Sun against the darkness of space, astronomers call the feature a prominence. But when seen against the background of the Sun, from a different perspective, the feature appears darker than its surroundings and is called a filament.

Does the Sun have corona?

The corona is the outer atmosphere of the Sun. It extends many thousands of kilometers (miles) above the visible “surface” of the Sun, gradually transforming into the solar wind that flows outward through our solar system. The material in the corona is an extremely hot but very tenuous plasma.

What are spicules on the Sun?

Spicules are small jets of plasma from the surface of the Sun that last a few minutes. Around a million are occurring at any moment, even during periods of low solar activity. The mechanism responsible for launching spicules remains unknown, as is their contribution to heating the solar corona.

What are sunspots and solar flares?

Sunspots are areas that appear dark on the surface of the Sun. They appear dark because they are cooler than other parts of the Sun’s surface. Solar flares are a sudden explosion of energy caused by tangling, crossing or reorganizing of magnetic field lines near sunspots.

What are sunspots made of?

Sunspots have a lighter outer section called the penumbra, and a darker central region named the umbra. Sunspots are caused by disturbances in the Sun’s magnetic field welling up to the photosphere, the Sun’s visible “surface”.

What are solar flares made of?

A solar flare contains high energy photons and particles, and is released from the Sun in a relatively short amount of time (a few minutes). Here is a picture of magnetic loop, or prominence on the Sun.

What is trapped inside the sunspot?

This is what suppresses the upward convection of hot material and resultd in a cooler zone on the photosphere, i.e., a sunspot. Solar prominances are also confined by magnetic fields. The charged particles move along the field lines (they are trapped to go in the direction of the magnetic field).

Does the sun have a magnetic field?

Grasping what drives that magnetic system is crucial for understanding the nature of space throughout the solar system: The sun’s invisible magnetic field is responsible for everything from the solar explosions that cause space weather on Earth – such as auroras – to the interplanetary magnetic field and radiation …

Does the sun reverse its magnetic field?

The sun’s magnetic field changes polarity approximately every 11 years. It happens at the peak of each solar cycle as the sun’s inner magnetic dynamo re-organizes itself. The coming reversal will mark the midpoint of Solar Cycle 24. Half of “solar max” will be behind us, with half yet to come.

What causes the sun to reset?

The magnetic poles of the sun flip approximately every 11 years causing a solar cycle that has been meticulously tracked since the 1600s. And over millennia, the total energy output of the sun at any given time is known to change.

Is the Sun getting closer to the Earth 2021?

On January 2, 2021, Earth is closer to the sun in its elliptical orbit than on any other day of the year, marking an annual event known as perihelion.

Is the Sun getting brighter 2021?

Astronomers estimate that the Sun’s luminosity will increase by about 6% every billion years. This increase might seem slight, but it will render Earth inhospitable to life in about 1.1 billion years. The planet will be too hot to support life.

Will the Sun explode?

Our sun isn’t massive enough to trigger a stellar explosion, called a supernova, when it dies, and it will never become a black hole either. In order to create a supernova, a star needs about 10 times the mass of our sun.

How long will the Earth last?

The upshot: Earth has at least 1.5 billion years left to support life, the researchers report this month in Geophysical Research Letters. If humans last that long, Earth would be generally uncomfortable for them, but livable in some areas just below the polar regions, Wolf suggests.

Is Earth losing water?

Water flows endlessly between the ocean, atmosphere, and land. Earth’s water is finite, meaning that the amount of water in, on, and above our planet does not increase or decrease.