Sun Overview: Structure, Solar Phenomena, and Impact | Studento

Sun Overview: Structure, Solar Phenomena, and Impact

• The Sun is a star made up of extremely hot gases, primarily hydrogen (70%), helium (26.5%), and other gases (3.5%).
  • It is 109 times bigger than Earth, weighs 2 × 10²⁷ tonnes, and accounts for 99.83% of the mass of the solar system.
  • The Sun is 150 million km away from Earth, and sunlight takes 8 minutes to reach Earth's surface.
  • The Sun's immense gravitational pull keeps the planets fixed in their orbits, revolving around it.
  • It continuously emits energy in the form of visible light, infrared, ultraviolet, X-rays, gamma rays, radio waves, and plasma gas.
  • Solar flares are sudden flashes of brightness near the Sun's surface, consisting of magnetic energy including electrons, protons, and nuclei. These can be harmful to satellite communication.
  • The Sun's core consists of hydrogen atoms that fuse together due to compression, creating helium. This process is called nuclear fusion.
  • Nuclear fusion produces a vast amount of energy, which radiates outward to the surface, atmosphere, and beyond.

Sun's Structure

• The convection zone, next to the core, has a temperature of 2 million degrees Celsius.
  • The photosphere, the Sun's visible surface, has a temperature of 6,000°C.
  • The Sun's atmosphere consists of the chromosphere and corona.
  • The corona emits spectral lines from iron, calcium, and nickel ions, with ionization increasing the temperature of the corona.

Solar Phenomena

• The solar wind is a stream of charged particles released from the Sun's corona, consisting mostly of electrons, protons, and alpha particles.
  • A solar storm is a disturbance on the Sun that can affect the entire solar system, including Earth's magnetosphere, causing space weather.
  • A geomagnetic storm is a temporary disturbance of Earth's magnetosphere caused by solar wind shock waves and magnetic fields.
  • Solar flares are harmful particles that can affect satellite communication.
  • The auroral display, caused by charged particles from the solar wind entering Earth's atmosphere, is known as:
    • Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights) in the northern hemisphere
    • Aurora Australis (Southern Lights) in the southern hemisphere
  • Sunspots are dark areas on the photosphere where solar flares originate, cooler than their surroundings. They appear and disappear in an 11-year cycle, marked by the "solar maximum" (peak number of sunspots) and "solar minimum" (lowest number).