Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
In the Sun, the region between the solar core at 0.2 of the Sun's radius and the outer convection zone at 0.71 of the Sun's radius is referred to as the radiation zone, although the core is also a radiative region. [1] The convection zone and the radiative zone are divided by the tachocline, another part of the Sun.
According to current models, random scattering from free electrons in the solar radiative zone (the zone within 75% of the solar radius, where heat transfer is by radiation) sets the photon diffusion time scale (or "photon travel time") from the core to the outer edge of the radiative zone at about 170,000 years.
The radiative zone is the thickest layer of the Sun, at 0.45 solar radii. From the core out to about 0.7 solar radii , thermal radiation is the primary means of energy transfer. [ 74 ] The temperature drops from approximately 7 million to 2 million kelvins with increasing distance from the core. [ 62 ]
Diffuse horizontal irradiance (DHI), or diffuse sky radiation is the radiation at the Earth's surface from light scattered by the atmosphere. It is measured on a horizontal surface with radiation coming from all points in the sky excluding circumsolar radiation (radiation coming from the sun disk).
Helium ionization is important because it is a critical part of the formation of the corona: when solar material is cool enough that the helium within it is only partially ionized (i.e. retains one of its two electrons), the material cools by radiation very effectively via both black-body radiation and direct coupling to the helium Lyman continuum.
A convection zone, convective zone or convective region of a star is a layer which is unstable due to convection. Energy is primarily or partially transported by convection in such a region. In a radiation zone , energy is transported by radiation and conduction .
The Sun has reached a period of peak activity in an 11-year cycle known as the Solar Maximum, marked by recent geomagnetic storms and near-global aurora light displays.
For example, in the Sun the convection at the base of the convection zone, near the core, is adiabatic but that near the surface is not. The mixing length theory contains two free parameters which must be set to make the model fit observations, so it is a phenomenological theory rather than a rigorous mathematical formulation.