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The heliosphere is the magnetosphere, astrosphere, and outermost atmospheric layer of the Sun.It takes the shape of a vast, tailed bubble-like region of space.In plasma physics terms, it is the cavity formed by the Sun in the surrounding interstellar medium.
The core is therefore shrinking, allowing the outer layers of the Sun to move closer to the center, releasing gravitational potential energy. According to the virial theorem, half of this released gravitational energy goes into heating, which leads to a gradual increase in the rate at which fusion occurs and thus an increase in the luminosity.
The Sun is composed primarily of the chemical elements hydrogen and helium; they account for 74.9% and 23.8%, respectively, of the mass of the Sun in the photosphere.All heavier elements, colloquially called metals in stellar astronomy, account for less than 2% of the mass, with oxygen (roughly 1% of the Sun's mass), carbon (0.3%), neon (0.2%), and iron (0.2%) being the most abundant.
Its outer layers will be ejected into space, leaving behind a dense white dwarf, half the original mass of the Sun but only the size of Earth. [30] The ejected outer layers may form a planetary nebula, returning some of the material that formed the Sun—but now enriched with heavier elements like carbon—to the interstellar medium. [33] [34]
The core contains 34% of the Sun's mass, but only 3% of the Sun's volume, and it generates 99% of the fusion power of the Sun. There are two distinct reactions in which four hydrogen nuclei may eventually result in one helium nucleus: the proton–proton chain reaction – which is responsible for most of the Sun's released energy – and the ...
Below, gravity tends to dominate the shape of most features, so that the Sun may often be described in terms of layers and horizontal features (like sunspots); above, dynamic forces dominate the shape of most features, so that the transition region itself is not a well-defined layer at a particular altitude.
The photosphere, which is the atmosphere's lowest and coolest layer, is normally its only visible part. [1] Light escaping from the surface of the star stems from this region and passes through the higher layers. The Sun's photosphere has a temperature in the 5,770–5,780 K (5,500–5,510 °C; 9,930–9,940 °F) range.
A corona (pl.: coronas or coronae) is the outermost layer of a star's atmosphere. It is a hot but relatively dim region of plasma populated by intermittent coronal structures known as solar prominences or filaments. The Sun's corona lies above the chromosphere and extends millions of kilometres into outer
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