Heliografia del sol
Páginas: 5 (1142 palabras)
Publicado: 6 de junio de 2011
National Aeronautics and Space Administration National Aeronautics and Space Administration
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Our Star — The Sun
www.nasa.gov
Our solar system’s central star, the Sun, has inspired mythological stories incultures around the world, including those of the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs of México, Native American tribes of North America and Canada, the Chinese, and many others. A number of ancient cultures built stone structures or modified natural rock formations to mark the motions of the Sun and Moon — they charted the seasons, created calendars, and monitored solar and lunar eclipses. Thesearchitectural sites show evidence of deliberate alignments to astronomical phenomena: sunrises, moonrises, moonsets, even stars or planets. Many cultures believed that the Earth was immovable and the Sun, other planets, and stars revolved about it. Ancient Greek astronomers and philosophers knew this “geocentric” concept from as early as the 6th century B.C. The Sun is the closest star to Earth, at amean distance from our planet of 149.60 million kilometers (92.96 million miles). This distance is known as an astronomical unit (abbreviated AU), and sets the scale for measuring distances all across the solar system. The Sun, a huge sphere of mostly ionized gas, supports life on Earth. The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, and climate.About one million Earths could fit inside the Sun. It is held together by gravitational attraction, producing immense pressure and temperature at its core. The Sun has six regions — the core, the radiative zone, and the convective zone in the interior; the visible surface (the photosphere); the chromosphere; and the outermost region, the corona. At the core, the temperature is about 15 milliondegrees Celsius (about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit), which is sufficient to sustain thermonuclear fusion. The energy produced in the core powers the Sun and produces essentially all the heat and light we receive on Earth. Energy from the core is carried outward by radiation, which bounces around the radiative zone, taking about 170,000 years to get from the core to the convective zone. Thetemperature drops below 2 million degrees Celsius (3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit) in the convective zone, where large bubbles of hot plasma (a soup of ionized atoms) move upwards. The Sun’s “surface” — the photosphere — is a 500-kilometerthick (300-mile-thick) region, from which most of the Sun’s radiation escapes outward and is detected as the sunlight we observe here on Earth about eight minutes afterit leaves the Sun. Sunspots in the photosphere are areas with strong magnetic fields that are cooler, and thus darker, than the surrounding region. The number of sunspots goes up and down every 11 years
as part of the Sun’s magnetic activity cycle. Also connected to this cycle are bright solar flares and huge coronal mass ejections that blast off the Sun. The temperature of the photosphere isabout 5,500 degrees Celsius (10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). Above the photosphere lie the tenuous chromosphere and the corona (“crown”). Visible light from these top regions is usually too weak to be seen against the brighter photosphere, but during total solar eclipses, when the Moon covers the photosphere, the chromosphere can be seen as a red rim around the Sun while the corona forms a beautifulwhite crown with plasma streaming outward, forming the “points” of the crown. Above the photosphere, the temperature increases with altitude, reaching temperatures as high as 2 million degrees Celsius (3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit). The source of coronal heating has been a scientific mystery for more than 50 years. Likely solutions have emerged from observations by the Solar and Heliospheric...
0
300,000,000
900,000,000
1,500,000,000
2,100,000,000
2,700,000,000
3,300,000,000
3,900,000,000
4,500,000,000
5,100,000,000
5,700,000,000
kilometers
Our Star — The Sun
www.nasa.gov
Our solar system’s central star, the Sun, has inspired mythological stories incultures around the world, including those of the ancient Egyptians, the Aztecs of México, Native American tribes of North America and Canada, the Chinese, and many others. A number of ancient cultures built stone structures or modified natural rock formations to mark the motions of the Sun and Moon — they charted the seasons, created calendars, and monitored solar and lunar eclipses. Thesearchitectural sites show evidence of deliberate alignments to astronomical phenomena: sunrises, moonrises, moonsets, even stars or planets. Many cultures believed that the Earth was immovable and the Sun, other planets, and stars revolved about it. Ancient Greek astronomers and philosophers knew this “geocentric” concept from as early as the 6th century B.C. The Sun is the closest star to Earth, at amean distance from our planet of 149.60 million kilometers (92.96 million miles). This distance is known as an astronomical unit (abbreviated AU), and sets the scale for measuring distances all across the solar system. The Sun, a huge sphere of mostly ionized gas, supports life on Earth. The connection and interactions between the Sun and Earth drive the seasons, ocean currents, weather, and climate.About one million Earths could fit inside the Sun. It is held together by gravitational attraction, producing immense pressure and temperature at its core. The Sun has six regions — the core, the radiative zone, and the convective zone in the interior; the visible surface (the photosphere); the chromosphere; and the outermost region, the corona. At the core, the temperature is about 15 milliondegrees Celsius (about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit), which is sufficient to sustain thermonuclear fusion. The energy produced in the core powers the Sun and produces essentially all the heat and light we receive on Earth. Energy from the core is carried outward by radiation, which bounces around the radiative zone, taking about 170,000 years to get from the core to the convective zone. Thetemperature drops below 2 million degrees Celsius (3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit) in the convective zone, where large bubbles of hot plasma (a soup of ionized atoms) move upwards. The Sun’s “surface” — the photosphere — is a 500-kilometerthick (300-mile-thick) region, from which most of the Sun’s radiation escapes outward and is detected as the sunlight we observe here on Earth about eight minutes afterit leaves the Sun. Sunspots in the photosphere are areas with strong magnetic fields that are cooler, and thus darker, than the surrounding region. The number of sunspots goes up and down every 11 years
as part of the Sun’s magnetic activity cycle. Also connected to this cycle are bright solar flares and huge coronal mass ejections that blast off the Sun. The temperature of the photosphere isabout 5,500 degrees Celsius (10,000 degrees Fahrenheit). Above the photosphere lie the tenuous chromosphere and the corona (“crown”). Visible light from these top regions is usually too weak to be seen against the brighter photosphere, but during total solar eclipses, when the Moon covers the photosphere, the chromosphere can be seen as a red rim around the Sun while the corona forms a beautifulwhite crown with plasma streaming outward, forming the “points” of the crown. Above the photosphere, the temperature increases with altitude, reaching temperatures as high as 2 million degrees Celsius (3.5 million degrees Fahrenheit). The source of coronal heating has been a scientific mystery for more than 50 years. Likely solutions have emerged from observations by the Solar and Heliospheric...
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