What features can you see on the sun

Images like the one above can be captured, or just observed, using a Hydrogen Alpha filter on an appropriate telescope. Once ejected, CMEs travel at speeds ranging from kilometers per second to as high as kilometers per second. We keep guard for them constantly because they can cause tremendous amounts of damage to our electrical infrastructure. At their most benign and beautiful , they produce the aurora seen over northern and southern extremes of the globe. However, CMEs are more dangerous than solar flares because they can cause communication blackouts on Earth by disrupting circuits in electrical grids.

If we see anything worse than that — and we will do one day — then the impact on our massively interconnected world could be catastrophic.

Fortunately, we have a Space Weather Prediction Center which constantly monitors for such events. Just like the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn have strong winds experience strong winds as jet streams, the Sun has jets of plasma bubbling up on its surface. Spicules have a thread-like appearance, and the solar surface consists of at least 10 million such spicules at any given moment. They are responsible for transferring heat throughout the Sun, and they extend for 6, miles above the photosphere before collapsing on the surface.

An average spicule is about miles km in diameter and lasts for 15 minutes before disappearing. It actually features a grain-like structure, which also serves as proof of convection inside the Sun. The cellular pattern of granules is due to changes in the solar temperature as heat moves through the Sun by convection. Each cell granule is the size of Texas and lasts for 15 to 20 minutes before being overpowered by new granules.

Supergranules have the same foundations as granules, but are much larger, up to 22, miles 35, km across, and last for a day or two before newer supergranules replace them. Sunspots are accompanied by bright white clouds called plages French for bleach. They extend above the photosphere into the chromosphere and can only be seen with hydrogen-alpha filters.

Faculae Latin for torch are also bright spots on the solar surface, which is why it is easy to confuse them with plages. However, faculae occur in the gaps between the granules and consist of intense magnetic field lines. This is because the number of faculae increased along with increased solar activity, and their bright nature overpowered the dip in radiance caused by sunspots.

Numerous features, with lifetimes of seconds to months, appear on the Sun's surface and in the solar atmosphere. Sunspots are dark blotches on the Sun's surface which reveal the presence of powerful magnetic disturbances. The disturbed, magnetically active regions around sunspots often generate solar flares and coronal mass ejections CME , two types of immense explosions.

Solar prominences , filaments , and coronal loops are structures formed from plasma suspended by magnetic fields in the Sun's atmosphere. Voids called coronal holes sometimes appear in the solar atmosphere, allowing fast streams of solar wind to flow freely outward into space.

Skip to main content. Although we call it the surface, the photosphere is actually the first layer of the solar atmosphere. It's about miles thick, with temperatures reaching about 10, degrees Fahrenheit 5, degrees Celsius. That's much cooler than the blazing core, but it's still hot enough to make carbon — like diamonds and graphite — not just melt, but boil. Most of the Sun's radiation escapes outward from the photosphere into space.

Above the photosphere is the chromosphere, the transition zone, and the corona. Not all scientists refer to the transition zone as its own region — it is simply the thin layer where the chromosphere rapidly heats and becomes the corona.

Visible light from these top regions of the Sun is usually too weak to be seen against the brighter photosphere, but during total solar eclipses, when the Moon covers the photosphere, the chromosphere looks like a fine, red rim around the Sun, while the corona forms a beautiful white crown "corona" means crown in Latin and Spanish with plasma streamers narrowing outward, forming shapes that look like flower petals.

Imagine walking away from a bonfire only to get warmer. The source of coronal heating is a major unsolved puzzle in the study of the Sun. The Sun generates magnetic fields that extend out into space to form the interplanetary magnetic field — the magnetic field that pervades our solar system. The field is carried through the solar system by the solar wind — a stream of electrically charged gas blowing outward from the Sun in all directions.

Since the Sun rotates, the magnetic field spins out into a large rotating spiral, known as the Parker spiral. This spiral has a shape something like the pattern of water from a rotating garden sprinkler. The Sun doesn't behave the same way all the time. It goes through phases of high and low activity, which make up the solar cycle. During this cycle, the Sun's photosphere, chromosphere, and corona change from quiet and calm to violently active. Sunspots, eruptions called solar flares, and coronal mass ejections are common at solar maximum.

Solar activity can release huge amounts of energy and particles, some of which impact us here on Earth. It also can cripple power grids , and corrode pipelines that carry oil and gas. The strongest geomagnetic storm on record is the Carrington Event , named for British astronomer Richard Carrington who observed the Sept.

Telegraph systems worldwide went haywire. Spark discharges shocked telegraph operators and set their telegraph paper on fire. Reportedly, the auroras were so brilliant that newspapers could be read as easily as in daylight. The flare also caused power surges that melted power transformers in New Jersey. In December , X-rays from a solar storm disrupted satellite-to-ground communications and Global Positioning System GPS navigation signals for about 10 minutes.

Our Sun. Introduction The Sun is a 4. A 3D model of the Sun, our star. The solar system is encased in a bubble called the heliosphere, which separates us from the vast galaxy beyond. Studying the Edge of the Sun's Magnetic Bubble. Full Moon Guide: October - November Full Moon Guide: September - October Models and lab tests suggest the asteroid could be venting sodium vapor as it orbits close to the Sun, explaining its increase in brightness.

The images show Venus approaching from the left while the Sun is off-camera to the upper right.