The Sun

What is the main composition of the sun?

What process does the sun use to convert heat into visible light or luminosity?

What is the approximate distance of the sun from Earth?

What is the temperature range of the sun's cores?

What percentage of the sun is composed of hydrogen?

What is the sun classified as in its life cycle?

What is the sun primarily made of?

What is the outermost layer of the sun's atmosphere?

What is the approximate temperature of the sun's core?

What is the primary method through which the radiative zone moves energy from nuclear fusion to other layers?

Which layer of the sun's atmosphere produces reddish warm colors during eclipses?

How long does it take for the light from the sun's atmospheric layers to reach Earth?

What is the estimated age of the sun?

What is the sun classified as?

Which layer of the sun emits the most visible light?

The Layers and Characteristics of the Sun

The sun has an atmosphere composed of the photosphere, chromosphere, and corona, containing the overflowing energy from its inner core.
Light from the sun's atmospheric layers takes approximately 8 minutes to reach Earth, despite the sun being km away.
The corona, the outermost layer, produces solar winds, is less dense than the sun, and is extremely hot.
The chromosphere, a layer of plasma, produces reddish warm colors during eclipses and reaches over a million degrees Fahrenheit.
The photosphere emits the most visible light and is documented to have boiling plasma, solar flares, and darker sunspots.
The sun's "surface," the photosphere, ranges in temperature up to 5,800 K and is one of the sun's hottest atmospheric layers.
The sun has three interior layers: the convection zone, radiative zone, and core, characterized by density and movements of plasma.
The convection zone is nearly 200,000 km thick and is boiling from the heat and radiation steaming out of the inner layers.
The radiative zone moves energy from nuclear fusion to other layers via radiation and protons are so packed that it can take thousands to millions of years to escape.
The sun's core, the innermost layer, is the hottest part where temperatures reach up to 27 million degrees Fahrenheit and is approximately 86,000 miles thick.
The sun is almost a million times larger than Earth, with an estimated 1.3 million Earths that could fit inside it.
The sun is approximately 4.6 billion years old and is classified as a main-sequence star, estimated to remain in this stage for another 5 billion years before transitioning to the red giant stage.

Test your knowledge of the sun's layers and characteristics with this quiz. Explore the photosphere, chromosphere, and corona, as well as the interior layers such as the convection zone, radiative zone, and core. Learn fascinating facts about the sun's size, age, and its future as a main-sequence star.