Related: Space weather: Sunspots, solar flares & coronal mass ejections (opens in new tab) Matter from the corona is blown off as the solar wind. The corona generally ranges from 900,000 F (500,000 C) to 10.8 million F (6 million C) and can even reach tens of millions of degrees when a solar flare occurs. At the top is the super-hot corona, which is made of structures such as loops and streams of ionized gas. Next up is the chromosphere, which is hotter, up to 35,500 F (19,725 C), and is apparently made up entirely of spiky structures known as spicules typically some 600 miles (1,000 km) across and up to 6,000 miles (10,000 km) high.Īfter that is the transition region a few hundred to a few thousand miles thick, which is heated by the corona above it and sheds most of its light as ultraviolet rays. Temperatures in the photosphere range from 11,000 F (6,125 C) at the bottom to 7,460 F (4,125 C) at the top. It is about 300 miles (500 km) thick, although most of the light comes from its lowest third. The photosphere is the lowest layer of the sun's atmosphere, and emits the light we see. Two main kinds of solar convection cells exist - granulation cells about 600 miles (1,000 kilometers) wide and supergranulation cells about 20,000 miles (30,000 km) in diameter. Roiling "convection cells" of gas dominate this zone. The convection zone reaches up to the sun's surface, and makes up 66% of the sun's volume but only a little more than 2% 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. Next is the radiative zone, which extends from the core to 70% of the way to the sun's surface, making up 32 % of the sun's volume and 48% of its mass. Although it only makes up roughly 2% of the sun's volume, it is almost 15 times the density of lead and holds nearly half of the sun's mass. The core extends from the sun's center to about a quarter of the way to its surface. Beyond that is the solar wind (opens in new tab), an outflow of gas from the corona. The solar atmosphere above that consists of the photosphere, chromosphere, a transition region and the corona. The solar interior, from the inside out, is made up of the core, radiative zone and the convective zone. The sun and the atmosphere of the sun (opens in new tab) are divided into several zones and layers. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) (opens in new tab) Internal structure and atmosphere of the sun Diagram showing the sun at the center of our solar system (not to scale).
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