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This article is about the star. For other uses, see Sun (disambiguation).

Template:Solar System Infobox/Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. The Sun has a diameter of about 1,392,000 kilometers (865,000 mi)* (about 109 Earths), and by itself accounts for about 99.86% of the Solar System's mass; the remainder consists of the planets (including Earth), asteroids, meteoroids, comets, and dust in orbit.[1] About three-quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, while most of the rest is helium. Less than 2% consists of other elements, including iron, oxygen, carbon, neon, and others.[2]

The Sun's color is white, although from the surface of the Earth it may appear yellow because of atmospheric scattering.[3] Its stellar classification, based on spectral class, is G2V, and is informally designated a yellow star, because the majority of its radiation is in the yellow-green portion of the visible spectrum.[4] In this spectral class label, G2 indicates its surface temperature of approximately 5,778 K (5,505 °C), and V (Roman five) indicates that the Sun, like most stars, is a main sequence star, and thus generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. Once regarded by astronomers as a small and relatively insignificant star, the Sun is now presumed to be brighter than about 85% of the stars in the Milky Way galaxy, most of which are red dwarfs.[5][6] The absolute magnitude of the Sun is +4.83; however, as the star closest to Earth, the Sun is the brightest object in the sky with an apparent magnitude of –26.74.[7][8] The Sun's hot corona continuously expands in space creating the solar wind, a hypersonic stream of charged particles that extends to the heliopause at roughly 100 AU. The bubble in the interstellar medium formed by the solar wind, the heliosphere, is the largest continuous structure in the Solar System.[9][10]

The Sun is currently traveling through the Local Interstellar Cloud in the Local Bubble zone, within the inner rim of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy. Of the 50 nearest stellar systems within 17 light-years from Earth, the Sun ranks 4th in mass.[11] The Sun orbits the center of the Milky Way at a distance of approximately 24000–26000 light years from the galactic center, completing one clockwise orbit, as viewed from the galactic north pole, in about 225–250 million years.

The mean distance of the Sun from the Earth is approximately 149.6 million kilometers (1 AU), though this varies as the Earth moves from perihelion in January to aphelion in July.[12] At this average distance, light travels from the Sun to Earth in about 8 minutes and 19 seconds. The energy of this sunlight supports almost all life on Earth by photosynthesis,[13] and drives Earth's climate and weather. The enormous effect of the Sun on the Earth has been recognized since pre-historic times, and the Sun has been regarded by some cultures as a deity. An accurate scientific understanding of the Sun developed slowly, and as recently as the 19th century prominent scientists had little knowledge of the Sun's physical composition and source of energy. This understanding is still developing; there are a number of present-day anomalies in the Sun's behavior that remain unexplained.

Characteristics

A lunar transit of the Sun captured during calibration of STEREO B's ultraviolet imaging cameras
An illustration of the structure of the Sun:
1. Core
2. Radiative zone
3. Convective zone
4. Photosphere
5. Chromosphere
6. Corona
7. Sunspot
8. Granules
9. Prominence

The Sun is a G-type main sequence star comprising about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. It is a near-perfect sphere, with an oblateness estimated at about 9 millionths,[14] which means that its polar diameter differs from its equatorial diameter by only 10 km (6 mi). As the Sun exists in a plasmatic state and is not solid, it rotates faster at its equator than at its poles. This behavior is known as differential rotation, and is caused by convection in the Sun and the movement of mass, due to steep temperature gradients from the core outwards. This mass carries a portion of the Sun’s counter-clockwise angular momentum, as viewed from the ecliptic north pole, thus redistributing the angular velocity. The period of this actual rotation is approximately 25.6 days at the equator and 33.5 days at the poles. However, due to our constantly changing vantage point from the Earth as it orbits the Sun, the apparent rotation of the star at its equator is about 28 days.[15] The centrifugal effect of this slow rotation is 18 million times weaker than the surface gravity at the Sun's equator. The tidal effect of the planets is even weaker, and does not significantly affect the shape of the Sun.[16]

The Sun is a Population I, or heavy element-rich,[note 1] star.[17] The formation of the Sun may have been triggered by shockwaves from one or more nearby supernovae.[18] This is suggested by a high abundance of heavy elements in the Solar System, such as gold and uranium, relative to the abundances of these elements in so-called Population II (heavy element-poor) stars. These elements could most plausibly have been produced by endergonic nuclear reactions during a supernova, or by transmutation through neutron absorption inside a massive second-generation star.[17]

The Sun does not have a definite boundary as rocky planets do, and in its outer parts the density of its gases drops approximately exponentially with increasing distance from its center.[19] Nevertheless, it has a well-defined interior structure, described below. The Sun's radius is measured from its center to the edge of the photosphere. This is simply the layer above which the gases are too cool or too thin to radiate a significant amount of light, and is therefore the surface most readily visible to the naked eye.[20]

The solar interior is not directly observable, and the Sun itself is opaque to electromagnetic radiation. However, just as seismology uses waves generated by earthquakes to reveal the interior structure of the Earth, the discipline of helioseismology makes use of pressure waves (infrasound) traversing the Sun's interior to measure and visualize the star's inner structure.[21] Computer modeling of the Sun is also used as a theoretical tool to investigate its deeper layers.

Core

Main article: Solar core
Cross-section of a solar-type star (NASA)

The core of the Sun is considered to extend from the center to about 0.2 to 0.25 solar radii.[22] It has a density of up to 150 g/cm3[23][24] (150 times the density of water on Earth) and a temperature of close to 13,600,000 kelvins (by contrast, the surface of the Sun is around 5,800 kelvins). Recent analysis of SOHO mission data favors a faster rotation rate in the core than in the rest of the radiative zone.[22] Through most of the Sun's life, energy is produced by nuclear fusion through a series of steps called the p–p (proton–proton) chain; this process converts hydrogen into helium.[25] Less than 2% of the helium generated in the Sun comes from the CNO cycle.

The core is the only location in the Sun that produces an appreciable amount of heat through fusion; inside 24% of the Sun's radius, 99% of the power has been generated, and by 30% of the radius, fusion has stopped nearly entirely. The rest of the star is heated by energy that is transferred outward from the core and the layers just outside. The energy produced by fusion in the core must then travel through many successive layers to the solar photosphere before it escapes into space as sunlight or kinetic energy of particles.[26][27]

The proton-proton chain occurs around 9.2×1037 times each second in the core of the Sun. Since this reaction uses four protons, it converts about 3.7×1038 protons (hydrogen nuclei) to helium nuclei every second (out of a total of ~8.9×1056 free protons in the Sun), or about 6.2×1011 kg per second.[27] Since fusing hydrogen into helium releases around 0.7% of the fused mass as energy,[28] the Sun releases energy at the mass-energy conversion rate of 4.26 million metric tons per second, 383 yottawatts (3.83×1026 W),[27] or 9.15×1010 megatons of TNT per second. This mass is not destroyed to create the energy, rather, the mass is carried away in the radiated energy, as described by the concept of mass-energy equivalence.

The energy production per unit time (power) produced by fusion in the core varies with distance from the solar center. At the center of the sun, fusion power is estimated by model to be about 276.5 watts/m3, [29] a power production density which more nearly approximates reptile metabolism than a thermonuclear bomb. [30] Peak power production in the Sun has been compared to the volumetric heats generated in an active compost heap. The tremendous power output of the Sun is not due to its high power per volume, but instead due to its large size.

The fusion rate in the core is in a self-correcting equilibrium: a slightly higher rate of fusion would cause the core to heat up more and expand slightly against the weight of the outer layers, reducing the fusion rate and correcting the perturbation; and a slightly lower rate would cause the core to cool and shrink slightly, increasing the fusion rate and again reverting it to its present level.[31][32]

The high-energy photons (gamma rays) released in fusion reactions are absorbed in only a few millimeters of solar plasma and then re-emitted again in random direction (and at slightly lower energy)—so it takes a long time for radiation to reach the Sun's surface. Estimates of the "photon travel time" range between 10,000 and 170,000 years.[33]

After a final trip through the convective outer layer to the transparent "surface" of the photosphere, the photons escape as visible light. Each gamma ray in the Sun's core is converted into several million visible light photons before escaping into space. Neutrinos are also released by the fusion reactions in the core, but unlike photons they rarely interact with matter, so almost all are able to escape the Sun immediately. For many years measurements of the number of neutrinos produced in the Sun were lower than theories predicted by a factor of 3. This discrepancy was recently resolved through the discovery of the effects of neutrino oscillation: the Sun emits the number of neutrinos predicted by the theory, but neutrino detectors were missing 2⁄3 of them because the neutrinos had changed flavor.[34]

Radiative zone

From about 0.25 to about 0.7 solar radii, solar material is hot and dense enough that thermal radiation is sufficient to transfer the intense heat of the core outward.[35] In this zone there is no thermal convection; while the material grows cooler as altitude increases (from 7,000,000 K to about 2,000,000 K) this temperature gradient is less than the value of adiabatic lapse rate and hence cannot drive convection.[24] Heat is transferred by radiation—ions of hydrogen and helium emit photons, which travel only a brief distance before being reabsorbed by other ions.[35] The density drops a hundredfold (from 20 g/cm3 to only 0.2 g/cm3) from the bottom to the top of the radiative zone.[35]

Between the radiative zone and the convection zone is a transition layer called the tachocline. This is a region where the sharp regime change between the uniform rotation of the radiative zone and the differential rotation of the convection zone results in a large shear—a condition where successive horizontal layers slide past one another.[36] The fluid motions found in the convection zone above, slowly disappear from the top of this layer to its bottom, matching the calm characteristics of the radiative zone on the bottom. Presently, it is hypothesized (see Solar dynamo), that a magnetic dynamo within this layer generates the Sun's magnetic field.[24]

Convective zone

In the Sun's outer layer, from its surface down to approximately 200,000 km (or 70% of the solar radius), the solar plasma is not dense enough or hot enough to transfer the heat energy of the interior outward through radiation (in other words it is opaque enough). As a result, thermal convection occurs as thermal columns carry hot material to the surface (photosphere) of the Sun. Once the material cools off at the surface, it plunges downward to the base of the convection zone, to receive more heat from the top of the radiative zone. At the visible surface of the Sun, the temperature has dropped to 5,700 K and the density to only 0.2 g/m3 (about 1/10,000th the density of air at sea level).[24]

The thermal columns in the convection zone form an imprint on the surface of the Sun as the solar granulation and supergranulation. The turbulent convection of this outer part of the solar interior causes a "small-scale" dynamo that produces magnetic north and south poles all over the surface of the Sun.[24] The Sun's thermal columns are Bénard cells and therefore tend to be hexagonal prisms.[37]

Photosphere

The effective temperature, or black body temperature, of the Sun (5777 K) is the temperature a black body of the same size must have to yield the same total emissive power.

The visible surface of the Sun, the photosphere, is the layer below which the Sun becomes opaque to visible light.[38] Above the photosphere visible sunlight is free to propagate into space, and its energy escapes the Sun entirely. The change in opacity is due to the decreasing amount of H− ions, which absorb visible light easily.[38] Conversely, the visible light we see is produced as electrons react with hydrogen atoms to produce H− ions.[39][40] The photosphere is tens to hundreds of kilometers thick, being slightly less opaque than air on Earth. Because the upper part of the photosphere is cooler than the lower part, an image of the Sun appears brighter in the center than on the edge or limb of the solar disk, in a phenomenon known as limb darkening.[38] Sunlight has approximately a black-body spectrum that indicates its temperature is about 6,000 K, interspersed with atomic absorption lines from the tenuous layers above the photosphere. The photosphere has a particle density of ~1023 m−3 (this is about 1% of the particle density of Earth's atmosphere at sea level).[35]

During early studies of the optical spectrum of the photosphere, some absorption lines were found that did not correspond to any chemical elements then known on Earth. In 1868, Norman Lockyer hypothesized that these absorption lines were because of a new element which he dubbed "helium", after the Greek Sun god Helios. It was not until 25 years later that helium was isolated on Earth.[41]

Atmosphere

See also: Corona and Coronal loop
During a total solar eclipse, the solar corona can be seen with the naked eye, during the brief period of totality.

The parts of the Sun above the photosphere are referred to collectively as the solar atmosphere.[38] They can be viewed with telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum, from radio through visible light to gamma rays, and comprise five principal zones: the temperature minimum, the chromosphere, the transition region, the corona, and the heliosphere.[38] The heliosphere, which may be considered the tenuous outer atmosphere of the Sun, extends outward past the orbit of Pluto to the heliopause, where it forms a sharp shock front boundary with the interstellar medium. The chromosphere, transition region, and corona are much hotter than the surface of the Sun.[38] The reason has not been conclusively proven; evidence suggests that Alfvén waves may have enough energy to heat the corona.[42]

The coolest layer of the Sun is a temperature minimum region about 500 km above the photosphere, with a temperature of about 4100 K.[38] This part of the Sun is cool enough to support simple molecules such as carbon monoxide and water, which can be detected by their absorption spectra.[43]

Above the temperature minimum layer is a layer about 2000 km thick, dominated by a spectrum of emission and absorption lines.[38] It is called the chromosphere from the Greek root chroma, meaning color, because the chromosphere is visible as a colored flash at the beginning and end of total eclipses of the Sun.[35] The temperature in the chromosphere increases gradually with altitude, ranging up to around 20000 K near the top.[38] In the upper part of chromosphere helium becomes partially ionized.[44]

Taken by Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope on January 12, 2007, this image of the Sun reveals the filamentary nature of the plasma connecting regions of different magnetic polarity.

Above the chromosphere there is a thin (about 200 km) transition region in which the temperature rises rapidly from around 20,000 K in the upper chromosphere to coronal temperatures closer to one million kelvins.[45] The temperature increase is facilitated by the full ionization of helium in the transition region, which significantly reduces radiative cooling of the plasma.[44] The transition region does not occur at a well-defined altitude. Rather, it forms a kind of nimbus around chromospheric features such as spicules and filaments, and is in constant, chaotic motion.[35] The transition region is not easily visible from Earth's surface, but is readily observable from space by instruments sensitive to the extreme ultraviolet portion of the spectrum.[46]

The corona is the extended outer atmosphere of the Sun, which is much larger in volume than the Sun itself. The corona continuously expands into the space forming the solar wind, which fills all the Solar System.[47] The low corona, which is very near the surface of the Sun, has a particle density around 1015–1016 m−3.[44][note 2] The average temperature of the corona and solar wind is about 1 million–2 million kelvins, however, in the hottest regions it is 8 million–20 million kelvins.[45] While no complete theory yet exists to account for the temperature of the corona, at least some of its heat is known to be from magnetic reconnection.[45][47]

The heliosphere, which is the cavity around the Sun filled with the solar wind plasma, extends from approximately 20 solar radii (0.1 AU) to the outer fringes of the Solar System. Its inner boundary is defined as the layer in which the flow of the solar wind becomes superalfvénic—that is, where the flow becomes faster than the speed of Alfvén waves.[48] Turbulence and dynamic forces outside this boundary cannot affect the shape of the solar corona within, because the information can only travel at the speed of Alfvén waves. The solar wind travels outward continuously through the heliosphere, forming the solar magnetic field into a spiral shape,[47] until it impacts the heliopause more than 50 AU from the Sun. In December 2004, the Voyager 1 probe passed through a shock front that is thought to be part of the heliopause. Both of the Voyager probes have recorded higher levels of energetic particles as they approach the boundary.[49]

Magnetic field

See also: Stellar magnetic field
The heliospheric current sheet extends to the outer reaches of the Solar System, and results from the influence of the Sun's rotating magnetic field on the plasma in the interplanetary medium.[50]

The Sun is a magnetically active star. It supports a strong, changing magnetic field that varies year-to-year and reverses direction about every eleven years around solar maximum.[51] The Sun's magnetic field leads to many effects that are collectively called solar activity, including sunspots on the surface of the Sun, solar flares, and variations in solar wind that carry material through the Solar System.[52] Effects of solar activity on Earth include auroras at moderate to high latitudes, and the disruption of radio communications and electric power. Solar activity is thought to have played a large role in the formation and evolution of the Solar System. Solar activity changes the structure of Earth's outer atmosphere.[53]

All matter in the Sun is in the form of gas and plasma because of its high temperatures. This makes it possible for the Sun to rotate faster at its equator (about 25 days) than it does at higher latitudes (about 35 days near its poles). The differential rotation of the Sun's latitudes causes its magnetic field lines to become twisted together over time, causing magnetic field loops to erupt from the Sun's surface and trigger the formation of the Sun's dramatic sunspots and solar prominences (see magnetic reconnection). This twisting action creates the solar dynamo and an 11-year solar cycle of magnetic activity as the Sun's magnetic field reverses itself about every 11 years.[54][55]

The solar magnetic field extends well beyond the Sun itself. The magnetized solar wind plasma carries Sun's magnetic field into the space forming what is called the interplanetary magnetic field.[47] Since the plasma can only move along the magnetic field lines, the interplanetary magnetic field is initially stretched radially away from the Sun. Because the fields above and below the solar equator have different polarities pointing towards and away from the Sun, there exists a thin current layer in the solar equatorial plane, which is called the heliospheric current sheet.[47] At the large distances the rotation of the Sun twists the magnetic field and the current sheet into the Archimedean spiral like structure called the Parker spiral.[47] The interplanetary magnetic field is much stronger than the dipole component of the solar magnetic field. The Sun's 50–400 μT (in the photosphere) magnetic dipole field reduces with the cube of the distance to about 0.1 nT at the distance of the Earth. However, according to spacecraft observations the interplanetary field at the Earth's location is about 100 times greater at around 5 nT.[56]

Chemical composition

The Sun is composed primarily of the chemical elements hydrogen and helium; they account for 74.9% and 23.8% of the mass of the Sun in the photosphere, respectively.[57] All heavier elements, called metals in astronomy, account for less than 2 percent of the mass. The most abundant metals are oxygen (roughly 1% of the Sun's mass), carbon (0.3%), neon (0.2%), and iron (0.2%).[58]

The Sun inherited its chemical composition from the interstellar medium out of which it formed: the hydrogen and helium in the Sun were produced by Big Bang nucleosynthesis. The metals were produced by stellar nucleosynthesis in generations of stars which completed their stellar evolution and returned their material to the interstellar medium before the formation of the Sun.[59] The chemical composition of the photosphere is normally considered representative of the composition of the primordial Solar System.[60] However, since the Sun formed, the helium and heavy elements have settled out of the photosphere. Therefore, the photosphere now contains slightly less helium and only 84% of the heavy elements than the protostellar Sun did; the protostellar Sun was 71.1% hydrogen, 27.4% helium, and 1.5% metals.[57]

In the inner portions of the Sun, nuclear fusion has modified the composition by converting hydrogen into helium, so the innermost portion of the Sun is now roughly 60% helium, with the metal abundance unchanged. Because the interior of the Sun is radiative, not convective (see Structure above), none of the fusion products from the core have risen to the photosphere.[61]

The solar heavy-element abundances described above are typically measured both using spectroscopy of the Sun's photosphere and by measuring abundances in meteorites that have never been heated to melting temperatures. These meteorites are thought to retain the composition of the protostellar Sun and thus not affected by settling of heavy elements. The two methods generally agree well.[2]

Singly ionized iron group elements

In the 1970s, much research focused on the abundances of iron group elements in the Sun.[62][63] Although significant research was done, the abundance determination of some iron group elements (e.g., cobalt and manganese) was still difficult at least as far as 1978 because of their hyperfine structures.[62]

The first largely complete set of oscillator strengths of singly ionized iron group elements were made available first in the 1960s,[64] and improved oscillator strengths were computed in 1976.[65] In 1978 the abundances of singly ionized elements of the iron group were derived.[62]

Solar and planetary mass fractionation relationship

Various authors have considered the existence of a mass fractionation relationship between the isotopic compositions of solar and planetary noble gases,[66] for example correlations between isotopic compositions of planetary and solar Ne and Xe.[67] Nevertheless, the belief that the whole Sun has the same composition as the solar atmosphere was still widespread, at least until 1983.[68]

In 1983, it was claimed that it was the fractionation in the Sun itself that caused the fractionation relationship between the isotopic compositions of planetary and solar wind implanted noble gases.[68]

Solar cycles

Main articles: Sunspots and List of solar cycles

Sunspots and the sunspot cycle

Measurements of solar cycle variation during the last 30 years

When observing the Sun with appropriate filtration, the most immediately visible features are usually its sunspots, which are well-defined surface areas that appear darker than their surroundings because of lower temperatures. Sunspots are regions of intense magnetic activity where convection is inhibited by strong magnetic fields, reducing energy transport from the hot interior to the surface. The magnetic field causes strong heating in the corona, forming active regions that are the source of intense solar flares and coronal mass ejections. The largest sunspots can be tens of thousands of kilometers across.[69]

The number of sunspots visible on the Sun is not constant, but varies over an 11-year cycle known as the solar cycle. At a typical solar minimum, few sunspots are visible, and occasionally none at all can be seen. Those that do appear are at high solar latitudes. As the sunspot cycle progresses, the number of sunspots increases and they move closer to the equator of the Sun, a phenomenon described by Spörer's law. Sunspots usually exist as pairs with opposite magnetic polarity. The magnetic polarity of the leading sunspot alternates every solar cycle, so that it will be a north magnetic pole in one solar cycle and a south magnetic pole in the next.[70]

History of the number of observed sunspots during the last 250 years, which shows the ~11-year solar cycle

The solar cycle has a great influence on space weather, and is a significant influence on the Earth's climate since luminosity has a direct relationship with magnetic activity.[71] Solar activity minima tend to be correlated with colder temperatures, and longer than average solar cycles tend to be correlated with hotter temperatures. In the 17th century, the solar cycle appears to have stopped entirely for several decades; very few sunspots were observed during this period. During this era, which is known as the Maunder minimum or Little Ice Age, Europe experienced very cold temperatures.[72] Earlier extended minima have been discovered through analysis of tree rings and appear to have coincided with lower-than-average global temperatures.[73]

Possible long-term cycle

A recent theory claims that there are magnetic instabilities in the core of the Sun that cause fluctuations with periods of either 41,000 or 100,000 years. These could provide a better explanation of the ice ages than the Milankovitch cycles.[74][75]

Life cycle

Main articles: Formation and evolution of the Solar System and Stellar evolution

The Sun was formed about 4.57 billion years ago when a hydrogen molecular cloud collapsed.[76] Solar formation is dated in two ways: the Sun's current main sequence age, determined using computer models of stellar evolution and nucleocosmochronology, is thought to be about 4.57 billion years.[77] This is in close accord with the radiometric date of the oldest Solar System material, at 4.567 billion years ago.[78][79]

The Sun is about halfway through its main-sequence evolution, during which nuclear fusion reactions in its core fuse hydrogen into helium. Each second, more than four million metric tons of matter are converted into energy within the Sun's core, producing neutrinos and solar radiation. At this rate, the Sun has so far converted around 100 Earth-masses of matter into energy. The Sun will spend a total of approximately 10 billion years as a main sequence star.[80]

The Sun does not have enough mass to explode as a supernova. Instead, in about 5 billion years, it will enter a red giant phase, its outer layers expanding as the hydrogen fuel in the core is consumed and the core contracts and heats up. Helium fusion will begin when the core temperature reaches around 100 million kelvins and will produce carbon, entering the asymptotic giant branch phase.[17]

Life-cycle of the Sun; sizes are not drawn to scale.

Earth's fate is precarious. As a red giant, the Sun will have a maximum radius beyond the Earth's current orbit, 1 AU (1.5×1011 m), 250 times the present radius of the Sun.[81] However, by the time it is an asymptotic giant branch star, the Sun will have lost roughly 30% of its present mass due to a stellar wind, so the orbits of the planets will move outward. If it were only for this, Earth would probably be spared, but new research suggests that Earth will be swallowed by the Sun owing to tidal interactions.[81] Even if Earth would escape incineration in the Sun, still all its water will be boiled away and most of its atmosphere would escape into space. Even during its current life in the main sequence, the Sun is gradually becoming more luminous (about 10% every 1 billion years), and its surface temperature is slowly rising. The Sun used to be fainter in the past, which is possibly the reason life on Earth has only existed for about 1 billion years on land. The increase in solar temperatures is such that already in about a billion years, the surface of the Earth will become too hot for liquid water to exist, ending all terrestrial life.[81][82]

Following the red giant phase, intense thermal pulsations will cause the Sun to throw off its outer layers, forming a planetary nebula. The only object that will remain after the outer layers are ejected is the extremely hot stellar core, which will slowly cool and fade as a white dwarf over many billions of years. This stellar evolution scenario is typical of low- to medium-mass stars.[83][84]

Sunlight

Main article: Sunlight

Sunlight is Earth's primary source of energy. The solar constant is the amount of power that the Sun deposits per unit area that is directly exposed to sunlight. The solar constant is equal to approximately 1368 W/m2 (watts per square meter) at a distance of one astronomical unit (AU) from the Sun (that is, on or near Earth).[85] Sunlight on the surface of Earth is attenuated by the Earth's atmosphere so that less power arrives at the surface—closer to 1000 W/m2 in clear conditions when the Sun is near the zenith.[86]

Solar energy can be harnessed by a variety of natural and synthetic processes—photosynthesis by plants captures the energy of sunlight and converts it to chemical form (oxygen and reduced carbon compounds), while direct heating or electrical conversion by solar cells are used by solar power equipment to generate electricity or to do other useful work. The energy stored in petroleum and other fossil fuels was originally converted from sunlight by photosynthesis in the distant past.[87]

Motion and location within the galaxy

File:Solarsystembarycenter.gif
Motion of Barycenter of Solar System relative to the Sun.

The Sun's motion about the centre of mass of the Solar System is complicated by perturbations from the planets. Every few hundred years this motion switches between prograde and retrograde[88]. The Sun lies close to the inner rim of the Milky Way Galaxy's Orion Arm, in the Local Fluff or the Gould Belt, at a hypothesized distance of 7.5–8.5 kpc (25,000–28,000 lightyears) from the Galactic Center,[89][90][91][92] contained within the Local Bubble, a space of rarefied hot gas, possibly produced by the supernova remnant, Geminga.[93] The distance between the local arm and the next arm out, the Perseus Arm, is about 6,500 light-years.[94] The Sun, and thus the Solar System, is found in what scientists call the galactic habitable zone.

The Apex of the Sun's Way, or the solar apex, is the direction that the Sun travels through space in the Milky Way. The general direction of the Sun's galactic motion is towards the star Vega near the constellation of Hercules, at an angle of roughly 60 sky degrees to the direction of the Galactic Center. If one were to observe it from Alpha Centauri, the closest star system, the Sun would appear to be in the constellation Cassiopeia.[95]

The Sun's orbit around the Galaxy is expected to be roughly elliptical with the addition of perturbations due to the galactic spiral arms and non-uniform mass distributions. In addition the Sun oscillates up and down relative to the galactic plane approximately 2.7 times per orbit. This is very similar to how a simple harmonic oscillator works with no drag force (damping) term. It has been argued that the Sun's passage through the higher density spiral arms often coincides with mass extinctions on Earth, perhaps due to increased impact events.[96] It takes the Solar System about 225–250 million years to complete one orbit of the galaxy (a galactic year),[97] so it is thought to have completed 20–25 orbits during the lifetime of the Sun. The orbital speed of the Solar System about the center of the Galaxy is approximately 251 km/s.[98] At this speed, it takes around 1,400 years for the Solar System to travel a distance of 1 light-year, or 8 days to travel 1 AU.[99]

Theoretical problems

Solar neutrino problem

Main article: Solar neutrino problem

For many years the number of solar electron neutrinos detected on Earth was 1⁄3 to 1⁄2 of the number predicted by the standard solar model. This anomalous result was termed the solar neutrino problem. Theories proposed to resolve the problem either tried to reduce the temperature of the Sun's interior to explain the lower neutrino flux, or posited that electron neutrinos could oscillate—that is, change into undetectable tau and muon neutrinos as they traveled between the Sun and the Earth.[100] Several neutrino observatories were built in the 1980s to measure the solar neutrino flux as accurately as possible, including the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory and Kamiokande.[101] Results from these observatories eventually led to the discovery that neutrinos have a very small rest mass and do indeed oscillate.[102][34] Moreover, in 2001 the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory was able to detect all three types of neutrinos directly, and found that the Sun's total neutrino emission rate agreed with the Standard Solar Model, although depending on the neutrino energy as few as one-third of the neutrinos seen at Earth are of the electron type.[101][103] This proportion agrees with that predicted by the Mikheyev-Smirnov-Wolfenstein effect (also known as the matter effect), which describes neutrino oscillation in matter, and it is now considered a solved problem.[101]

Coronal heating problem

Main article: Corona

The optical surface of the Sun (the photosphere) is known to have a temperature of approximately 6,000 K. Above it lies the solar corona, rising to a temperature of 1 million–2 million K.[45] The high temperature of the corona shows that it is heated by something other than direct heat conduction from the photosphere.[47]

It is thought that the energy necessary to heat the corona is provided by turbulent motion in the convection zone below the photosphere, and two main mechanisms have been proposed to explain coronal heating.[45] The first is wave heating, in which sound, gravitational or magnetohydrodynamic waves are produced by turbulence in the convection zone.[45] These waves travel upward and dissipate in the corona, depositing their energy in the ambient gas in the form of heat.[104] The other is magnetic heating, in which magnetic energy is continuously built up by photospheric motion and released through magnetic reconnection in the form of large solar flares and myriad similar but smaller events—nanoflares.[105]

Currently, it is unclear whether waves are an efficient heating mechanism. All waves except Alfvén waves have been found to dissipate or refract before reaching the corona.[106] In addition, Alfvén waves do not easily dissipate in the corona. Current research focus has therefore shifted towards flare heating mechanisms.[45]

Faint young Sun problem

Main article: Faint young Sun paradox

Theoretical models of the Sun's development suggest that 3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago, during the Archean period, the Sun was only about 75% as bright as it is today. Such a weak star would not have been able to sustain liquid water on the Earth's surface, and thus life should not have been able to develop. However, the geological record demonstrates that the Earth has remained at a fairly constant temperature throughout its history, and that the young Earth was somewhat warmer than it is today. The consensus among scientists is that the young Earth's atmosphere contained much larger quantities of greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide, methane and/or ammonia) than are present today, which trapped enough heat to compensate for the smaller amount of solar energy reaching the planet.[107]

Present anomalies

The Sun is currently behaving unexpectedly in a number of ways.[108][109] (This may be changing. On 19-Jan-2009 an M-class solar flare was observed over new cycle active region No. 11040[110])

  • It is in the midst of an unusual sunspot minimum, lasting far longer and with a higher percentage of spotless days than normal; since May 2008, predictions of an imminent rise in activity have been regularly made and as regularly confuted.
  • It is measurably dimming; its output has dropped 0.02% at visible wavelengths and 6% at EUV wavelengths in comparison with the levels at the last solar minimum.[111]
  • Over the last two decades, the solar wind's speed has dropped 3%, its temperature 13%, and its density 20%.[112]
  • Its magnetic field is at less than half strength compared to the minimum of 22 years ago. The entire heliosphere, which fills the Solar System, has shrunk as a result, resulting in an increase in the level of cosmic radiation striking the Earth and its atmosphere.

History of observation

Early understanding

The Trundholm Sun chariot pulled by a horse is a sculpture believed to be illustrating an important part of Nordic Bronze Age mythology.

Humanity's most fundamental understanding of the Sun is as the luminous disk in the sky, whose presence above the horizon creates day and whose absence causes night. In many prehistoric and ancient cultures, the Sun was thought to be a solar deity or other supernatural phenomenon. Worship of the Sun was central to civilizations such as the Inca of South America and the Aztecs of what is now Mexico. Many ancient monuments were constructed with solar phenomena in mind; for example, stone megaliths accurately mark the summer or winter solstice (some of the most prominent megaliths are located in Nabta Playa, Egypt, Mnajdra, Malta and at Stonehenge, England); Newgrange, a prehistoric human-built mount in Ireland, was designed to detect the winter solstice; the pyramid of El Castillo at Chichén Itzá in Mexico is designed to cast shadows in the shape of serpents climbing the pyramid at the vernal and autumn equinoxes. During the Roman era the Sun's birthday was a holiday celebrated as Sol Invictus (literally "unconquered sun") soon after the winter solstice which may have been an antecedent to Christmas. Regarding the fixed stars, the Sun appears from Earth to revolve once a year along the ecliptic through the zodiac, and so Greek astronomers considered it to be one of the seven planets (Greek planetes, "wanderer"), after which the seven days of the week are named in some languages.[113][114][115]

Development of scientific understanding

One of the first people to offer a scientific or philosophical explanation for the Sun was the Greek philosopher Anaxagoras, who reasoned that it was a giant flaming ball of metal even larger than the Peloponnesus, and not the chariot of Helios.[116] For teaching this heresy, he was imprisoned by the authorities and sentenced to death, though he was later released through the intervention of Pericles. Eratosthenes estimated the distance between the Earth and the Sun in the 3rd century BCE as "of stadia myriads 400 and 80000", the translation of which is ambiguous, implying either 4,080,000 stadia (755,000 km) or 804,000,000 stadia (148 to 153 million kilometers); the latter value is correct to within a few percent. In the 1st century CE, Ptolemy estimated the distance as 1,210 times the Earth radius.[117]

Medieval Arabic contributions include Albatenius discovering that the direction of the Sun's eccentric is changing,[118] and Ibn Yunus observing more than 10,000 entries for the Sun's position for many years using a large astrolabe.[119] The theory that the Sun is the center around which the planets move was apparently proposed by the ancient Greek Aristarchus as well as several ancient Babylonian, ancient Indian and medieval Arabic astronomers (see Heliocentrism). This view was revived in the 16th century by Nicolaus Copernicus. In the early 17th century, the invention of the telescope permitted detailed observations of sunspots by Thomas Harriot, Galileo Galilei and other astronomers. Galileo made some of the first known Western observations of sunspots and posited that they were on the surface of the Sun rather than small objects passing between the Earth and the Sun.[120] Sunspots were also observed since the Han dynasty and Chinese astronomers maintained records of these observations for centuries.

In 1672 Giovanni Cassini and Jean Richer determined the distance to Mars and were thereby able to calculate the distance to the Sun. Isaac Newton observed the Sun's light using a prism, and showed that it was made up of light of many colors,[121] while in 1800 William Herschel discovered infrared radiation beyond the red part of the solar spectrum.[122] The 1800s saw spectroscopic studies of the Sun advance, and Joseph von Fraunhofer made the first observations of absorption lines in the spectrum, the strongest of which are still often referred to as Fraunhofer lines. When expanding the spectrum of light from the Sun, there are large number of missing colors can be found.

In the early years of the modern scientific era, the source of the Sun's energy was a significant puzzle. Lord Kelvin suggested that the Sun was a gradually cooling liquid body that was radiating an internal store of heat.[123] Kelvin and Hermann von Helmholtz then proposed the Kelvin-Helmholtz mechanism to explain the energy output. Unfortunately the resulting age estimate was only 20 million years, well short of the time span of at least 300 million years suggested by some geological discoveries of that time.[123] In 1890 Joseph Lockyer, who discovered helium in the solar spectrum, proposed a meteoritic hypothesis for the formation and evolution of the Sun.[124]

Not until 1904 was a documented solution offered. Ernest Rutherford suggested that the Sun's output could be maintained by an internal source of heat, and suggested radioactive decay as the source.[125] However, it would be Albert Einstein who would provide the essential clue to the source of the Sun's energy output with his mass-energy equivalence relation E = mc2.[126]

In 1920, Sir Arthur Eddington proposed that the pressures and temperatures at the core of the Sun could produce a nuclear fusion reaction that merged hydrogen (protons) into helium nuclei, resulting in a production of energy from the net change in mass.[127] The preponderance of hydrogen in the Sun was confirmed in 1925 by Cecilia Payne. The theoretical concept of fusion was developed in the 1930s by the astrophysicists Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar and Hans Bethe. Hans Bethe calculated the details of the two main energy-producing nuclear reactions that power the Sun.[128][129]

Finally, a seminal paper was published in 1957 by Margaret Burbidge, entitled "Synthesis of the Elements in Stars".[130] The paper demonstrated convincingly that most of the elements in the universe had been synthesized by nuclear reactions inside stars, some like our Sun.

Solar space missions

The Moon passing in front of the Sun, as taken by the STEREO-B spacecraft on February 25, 2007. Because the satellite is in an Earth-trailing orbit and is further from the Moon than the Earth is, the Moon appears smaller than the Sun.[131]

The first satellites designed to observe the Sun were NASA's Pioneers 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, which were launched between 1959 and 1968. These probes orbited the Sun at a distance similar to that of the Earth, and made the first detailed measurements of the solar wind and the solar magnetic field. Pioneer 9 operated for a particularly long time, transmitting data until 1987.[132]

In the 1970s, two Helios spacecraft and the Skylab Apollo Telescope Mount provided scientists with significant new data on solar wind and the solar corona. The Helios 1 and 2 probes was a joint U.S.–German probe that studied the solar wind from an orbit carrying the spacecraft inside Mercury's orbit at perihelion.[133] The Skylab space station, launched by NASA in 1973, included a solar observatory module called the Apollo Telescope Mount that was operated by astronauts resident on the station.[46] Skylab made the first time-resolved observations of the solar transition region and of ultraviolet emissions from the solar corona.[46] Discoveries included the first observations of coronal mass ejections, then called "coronal transients", and of coronal holes, now known to be intimately associated with the solar wind.[133]

In 1980, the Solar Maximum Mission was launched by NASA. This spacecraft was designed to observe gamma rays, X-rays and UV radiation from solar flares during a time of high solar activity and solar luminosity. Just a few months after launch, however, an electronics failure caused the probe to go into standby mode, and it spent the next three years in this inactive state. In 1984 Space Shuttle Challenger mission STS-41C retrieved the satellite and repaired its electronics before re-releasing it into orbit. The Solar Maximum Mission subsequently acquired thousands of images of the solar corona before re-entering the Earth's atmosphere in June 1989.[134]

Launched in 1991, Japan's Yohkoh (Sunbeam) satellite observed solar flares at X-ray wavelengths. Mission data allowed scientists to identify several different types of flares, and demonstrated that the corona away from regions of peak activity was much more dynamic and active than had previously been supposed. Yohkoh observed an entire solar cycle but went into standby mode when an annular eclipse in 2001 caused it to lose its lock on the Sun. It was destroyed by atmospheric reentry in 2005.[135]

One of the most important solar missions to date has been the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory, jointly built by the European Space Agency and NASA and launched on 2 December 1995.[46] Originally intended to serve a two-year mission, a mission extension through 2012 was approved in October 2009.[136] It has proven so useful that a follow-on mission, the Solar Dynamics Observatory, was launched in February 2010.[137] Situated at the Lagrangian point between the Earth and the Sun (at which the gravitational pull from both is equal), SOHO has provided a constant view of the Sun at many wavelengths since its launch.[46] Besides its direct solar observation, SOHO has enabled the discovery of large numbers of comets, mostly very tiny sungrazing comets which incinerate as they pass the Sun.[138]

All these satellites have observed the Sun from the plane of the ecliptic, and so have only observed its equatorial regions in detail. The Ulysses probe was launched in 1990 to study the Sun's polar regions. It first traveled to Jupiter, to "slingshot" past the planet into an orbit which would take it far above the plane of the ecliptic. Serendipitously, it was well-placed to observe the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter in 1994. Once Ulysses was in its scheduled orbit, it began observing the solar wind and magnetic field strength at high solar latitudes, finding that the solar wind from high latitudes was moving at about 750 km/s which was slower than expected, and that there were large magnetic waves emerging from high latitudes which scattered galactic cosmic rays.[139]

Elemental abundances in the photosphere are well known from spectroscopic studies, but the composition of the interior of the Sun is more poorly understood. A solar wind sample return mission, Genesis, was designed to allow astronomers to directly measure the composition of solar material. Genesis returned to Earth in 2004 but was damaged by a crash landing after its parachute failed to deploy on reentry into Earth's atmosphere. Despite severe damage, some usable samples have been recovered from the spacecraft's sample return module and are undergoing analysis.[140]

The Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) mission was launched in October 2006. Two identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to (respectively) pull further ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth. This enables stereoscopic imaging of the Sun and solar phenomena, such as coronal mass ejections.[141][142]

Observation and effects

The Sun as it appears through a camera lens from the surface of Earth

Sunlight is very bright, and looking directly at the Sun with the naked eye for brief periods can be painful, but is not particularly hazardous for normal, non-dilated eyes.[143][144] Looking directly at the Sun causes phosphene visual artifacts and temporary partial blindness. It also delivers about 4 milliwatts of sunlight to the retina, slightly heating it and potentially causing damage in eyes that cannot respond properly to the brightness.[145][146] UV exposure gradually yellows the lens of the eye over a period of years and is thought to contribute to the formation of cataracts, but this depends on general exposure to solar UV, not on whether one looks directly at the Sun.[147] Long-duration viewing of the direct Sun with the naked eye can begin to cause UV-induced, sunburn-like lesions on the retina after about 100 seconds, particularly under conditions where the UV light from the Sun is intense and well focused;[148][149] conditions are worsened by young eyes or new lens implants (which admit more UV than aging natural eyes), Sun angles near the zenith, and observing locations at high altitude.

Viewing the Sun through light-concentrating optics such as binoculars is very hazardous without an appropriate filter that blocks UV and substantially dims the sunlight. An attenuating (ND) filter might not filter UV and so is still dangerous. Attenuating filters to view the Sun should be specifically designed for that use: some improvised filters pass UV or IR rays that can harm the eye at high brightness levels.[150] Unfiltered binoculars can deliver over 500 times as much energy to the retina as using the naked eye, killing retinal cells almost instantly (even though the power per unit area of image on the retina is the same, the heat cannot dissipate fast enough because the image is larger). Even brief glances at the midday Sun through unfiltered binoculars can cause permanent blindness.[151]

Partial solar eclipses are hazardous to view because the eye's pupil is not adapted to the unusually high visual contrast: the pupil dilates according to the total amount of light in the field of view, not by the brightest object in the field. During partial eclipses most sunlight is blocked by the Moon passing in front of the Sun, but the uncovered parts of the photosphere have the same surface brightness as during a normal day. In the overall gloom, the pupil expands from ~2 mm to ~6 mm, and each retinal cell exposed to the solar image receives about ten times more light than it would looking at the non-eclipsed Sun. This can damage or kill those cells, resulting in small permanent blind spots for the viewer.[152] The hazard is insidious for inexperienced observers and for children, because there is no perception of pain: it is not immediately obvious that one's vision is being destroyed.

During sunrise and sunset sunlight is attenuated due to Rayleigh scattering and Mie scattering from a particularly long passage through Earth's atmosphere,[153] and the Sun is sometimes faint enough to be viewed comfortably with the naked eye or safely with optics (provided there is no risk of bright sunlight suddenly appearing through a break between clouds). Hazy conditions, atmospheric dust, and high humidity contribute to this atmospheric attenuation.[154]

A rare optical phenomenon may occur shortly after sunset or before sunrise, known as a green flash. The flash is caused by light from the Sun just below the horizon being bent (usually through a temperature inversion) towards the observer. Light of shorter wavelengths (violet, blue, green) is bent more than that of longer wavelengths (yellow, orange, red) but the violet and blue light is scattered more, leaving light that is perceived as green.[155]

Ultraviolet light from the Sun has antiseptic properties and can be used to sanitize tools and water. It also causes sunburn, and has other medical effects such as the production of vitamin D. Ultraviolet light is strongly attenuated by Earth's ozone layer, so that the amount of UV varies greatly with latitude and has been partially responsible for many biological adaptations, including variations in human skin color in different regions of the globe.[156]

Terminology

See also: The Sun in human culture

Like other natural phenomena, the Sun has been an object of veneration in many cultures throughout human history, and was the source of the word Sunday.

The Sun has no official name according to the International Astronomical Union, the body responsible for naming celestial objects.[157] The name Sol (Template:Pron-en, from Latin Sol, the Sun god), is accepted but not commonly used; the adjectival form is the related word solar.[158][159] "Sol" is the modern word for "Sun" in many other languages.[160]

The term sol is also used by planetary astronomers to refer to the duration of a solar day on another planet, such as Mars.[161] A mean Earth solar day is approximately 24 hours, while a mean Martian sol, is 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds.[162] See also Timekeeping on Mars.

In East Asia, the Sun is represented by the symbol 日 (Chinese pinyin rì or Japanese nichi) or 太阳(simplified)/太陽(traditional) (pinyin tài yáng or Japanese taiyō). In Vietnamese, these Han words are called nhật and thái dương respectively, while the native Vietnamese word mặt trời literally means "face of the heavens". The Moon and the Sun are associated with the yin and yang where the Moon represents yin and the Sun yang as dynamic opposites.[163]

See also

Notes

  1. ^ In astronomical sciences, the term heavy elements (or metals) refers to all elements except hydrogen and helium.
  2. ^ Earth's atmosphere near sea level has a particle density of about 2×1025 m−3.

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Further reading

  • Thompson, M.J. (2004). "Solar interior: Helioseismology and the Sun's interior". Astronomy and Geophysics. 45 (4): 21–25.

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