![]() ![]() ![]() Solar wind is, in a sense, just an extension of the Sun’s atmosphere. The Sun does in fact have an atmosphere! The Sun’s outer atmosphere (also called the corona) is the source of solar wind, which extends millions of kilometers into space, beyond the orbits of Earth and the other planets. The photosphere is not like the surface of a planet even if you could tolerate the heat, you couldn't stand on it. It is what we see as the visible surface of the Sun. The boundary between the Sun's interior and the solar atmosphere is called the photosphere. Inside the Sun, energy is created in the core and is moved from the center to the surface through both radiation and convection, similarly to how bubbles move upward in a pot of boiling water on your stove. The Sun’s interior is divided further into three parts – core, radiative zone, and convective zone. The corona sends solar wind made of plasma out in all directions, traveling beyond the boundaries of our solar system.Īlthough the Sun isn’t solid, it has three distinguishable regions that solar physicists refer to as the interior, the visible surface, and the atmosphere. ![]() 14, 2020) the outermost part of the Sun’s atmosphere, called the corona, is visible. More matter exists in the plasma state than as a liquid, solid, or gas – the visible universe is thought to be 99% plasma! The Sun Has Layersĭuring a solar eclipse (Dec. Plasma is an electrically charged gas that forms at extremely high temperatures when fast moving atoms collide with each other and knock electrons loose. ![]() In the extreme heat of the Sun, most of the gas exists as plasma. Trace amounts of other elements (0.1%), such as oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, silicon, magnesium, neon, iron, and sulfur are also present (NASA). The Sun is a glowing, spinning ball of very hot gases, primarily hydrogen (92.1%) and helium (7.9%). Length of time to orbit the Milky Way galaxy: 250 million years What’s the Sun Made of? Length of time for one solar cycle: ~11 years Mass: 1.989 x 1030 kg – about 333,000 times the mass of EarthĪge: about 4.6 billion years old – the same as Earth and other planets that formed within our solar systemĪverage temperature: varies from 5,600 ℃ (surface) to 15 million ℃ (core)Īmount of light energy the Sun produces each second: 3.8 x 1026 terawatts (one trillion watts) – more than the amount of energy all humans will use in 600 yearsĪmount of the Sun’s energy that reaches Earth each second: 173,000 terawatts – less than one billionth of the total energy created by the Sun each secondĪmount of the Sun’s energy currently used for electricity: less than 0.1% Size (compared to Earth): about 109 times wider than the Earth – about 1.3 million Earths could fit inside the Sun Our observation suggests the possibility of vortex shedding in the solar corona.Distance between the Sun and Earth: 93 million miles (149 million km)Īmount of time it takes for light from the Sun to reach Earth: about eight minutesĭiameter: 865,370 miles (1.3927 million km) The computed Strouhal number is consistent with the prediction from previous MHD simulations. A newly formed shrinking loop in the postflare region possibly generates the oscillation of the upflow in the wake of the hot and dense loop through vortex shedding. Using an observation from the Atmospheric Imaging Assembly on board the Solar Dynamics Observatory, we report a wavelike or oscillating plasma flow propagating upward against the Sun’s gravitational force. The dimensionless Strouhal number, the ratio of the blunt body diameter to the product of the period of vortex shedding and the speed of a flowing medium, is a robust indicator for vortex shedding, and, generally of the order of 0.2 for a wide range of Reynolds number. Numerical simulations have shown that the phenomenon of vortex shedding could also develop in the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) domain. Vortex shedding is an oscillating flow that is commonly observed in fluids due to the presence of a blunt body in a flowing medium. ![]()
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