Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
In solar physics, a spicule, also known as a fibril or mottle, [a] is a dynamic jet of plasma in the Sun's chromosphere about 300 km in diameter. [1] They move upwards with speeds between 15 and 110 km/s from the photosphere and last a few minutes each [ 1 ] before falling back to the solar atmosphere. [ 2 ]
Under this scenario, they claimed the Sun might have contributed 50% of the observed global warming since 1900. [49] Stott et al. estimated that the residual effects of the prolonged high solar activity during the last 30 years account for between 16% and 36% of warming from 1950 to 1999. [50]
The Sun is classed as a G2 star, [66] meaning it is a G-type star, with 2 indicating its surface temperature is in the second range of the G class. The solar constant is the amount of power that the Sun deposits per unit area that is directly exposed to sunlight.
But the orbit of the Earth is an ellipse not centered on the Sun, and its speed varies between 30.287 and 29.291 km/s, according to Kepler's laws of planetary motion, and its angular speed also varies, and thus the Sun appears to move faster (relative to the background stars) at perihelion (currently around 3 January) and slower at aphelion a ...
NASA defines [2] heliophysics as "(1) the comprehensive new term for the science of the Sun - Solar System Connection, (2) the exploration, discovery, and understanding of Earth's space environment, and (3) the system science that unites all of the linked phenomena in the region of the cosmos influenced by a star like our Sun."
From 2007 to 2009, sunspot levels were far below average. In 2008, the Sun was spot-free 73 percent of the time, extreme even for a solar minimum. Only 1913 was more pronounced, with no sunspots for 85 percent of that year. The Sun continued to languish through mid-December 2009, when the largest group of sunspots to emerge for several years ...
The angular diameter of the Earth as seen from the Sun is approximately 1/11,700 radians (about 18 arcseconds), meaning the solid angle of the Earth as seen from the Sun is approximately 1/175,000,000 of a steradian. Thus the Sun emits about 2.2 billion times the amount of radiation that is caught by Earth, in other words about 3.846×10 26 watts.
In roughly 5 billion years, the Sun will cool and expand outward to many times its current diameter (becoming a red giant), before casting off its outer layers as a planetary nebula and leaving behind a stellar remnant known as a white dwarf. In the distant future, the gravity of passing stars will gradually reduce the Sun's retinue of planets.