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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 .
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.
Earth's outer core is a fluid layer about 2,260 km (1,400 mi) in height (i.e. distance from the highest point to the lowest point at the edge of the inner core) [36% of the Earth's radius, 15.6% of the volume] and composed of mostly iron and nickel that lies above Earth's solid inner core and below its mantle. [31]
Earth's mechanically rigid outer layer of Earth's crust and upper mantle, the lithosphere, is divided into tectonic plates. These plates are rigid segments that move relative to each other at one of three boundaries types: at convergent boundaries , two plates come together; at divergent boundaries , two plates are pulled apart; and at ...
The photic zone (or euphotic zone, epipelagic zone, or sunlight zone) is the uppermost layer of a body of water that receives sunlight, allowing phytoplankton to perform photosynthesis. It undergoes a series of physical, chemical, and biological processes that supply nutrients into the upper water column .
A stellar atmosphere is the outer region of a star, which includes the layers above the opaque photosphere; stars of low temperature might have outer atmospheres containing compound molecules. The atmosphere of Earth is composed of nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), argon (0.9%), carbon dioxide (0.04%) and trace gases. [2]
The expanding photosphere method (EPM) is a method used to measure distances to Type II supernovae. It was developed by Robert Kirshner and John Kwan in 1974, based on the Baade–Wesselink method (1926). [1] [2] EPM is a geometrical method that compares a supernova's angular size to its physical size determined from spectroscopic measurements. [3]
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 ...