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The Sun is composed primarily of the chemical elements hydrogen and helium; they account for 74.9% and 23.8%, respectively, of the mass of the Sun in the photosphere.All heavier elements, colloquially called metals in stellar astronomy, account for less than 2% of the mass, with oxygen (roughly 1% of the Sun's mass), carbon (0.3%), neon (0.2%), and iron (0.2%) being the most abundant.
The red color of the chromosphere could be seen during the solar eclipse of August 11, 1999.. The density of the Sun's chromosphere decreases exponentially with distance from the center of the Sun by a factor of roughly 10 million, from about 2 × 10 −4 kg/m 3 at the chromosphere's inner boundary to under 1.6 × 10 −11 kg/m 3 at the outer boundary. [7]
The photosphere, which is the atmosphere's lowest and coolest layer, is normally its only visible part. [1] Light escaping from the surface of the star stems from this region and passes through the higher layers. The Sun's photosphere has a temperature in the 5,770–5,780 K (5,500–5,510 °C; 9,930–9,940 °F) range.
Nearly all radiation from the sun originates from the photosphere, with sizzling temperatures ranging between 8,132 and 10,832 degrees Fahrenheit (4,500 and 6,000 degrees Celsius).
The spectrum of sunlight has approximately the spectrum of a black-body radiating at 5,772 K (9,930 °F), [12] interspersed with atomic absorption lines from the tenuous layers above the photosphere. The photosphere has a particle density of ~10 23 m −3 (about 0.37% of the particle number per volume of Earth's atmosphere at sea level). The ...
They are caused by currents of plasma in the Sun's convective zone, directly below the photosphere. The grainy appearance of the photosphere is produced by the tops of these convective cells; this pattern is referred to as granulation. The rising part of each granule is located in the center, where the plasma is hotter.
A radiative zone is a layer of a star's interior where energy is primarily transported toward the exterior by means of radiative diffusion and thermal conduction, rather than by convection. [1] Energy travels through the radiative zone in the form of electromagnetic radiation as photons .
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