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Illustration of different stars' internal structure based on mass. The Sun in the middle has an inner radiating zone and an outer convective zone. 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 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 ...
In solar physics and observation, granules are convection cells in the Sun's photosphere. They are caused by currents of plasma in the Sun's convective zone , directly below the photosphere. The grainy appearance of the photosphere is produced by the tops of these convective cells; this pattern is referred to as granulation .
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.
In solar physics and observation, supergranulation is a pattern of convection cells in the Sun's photosphere. The individual convection cells are typically referred to as supergranules . The pattern was discovered in the 1950s by A.B. Hart [ 1 ] using Doppler velocity measurements showing horizontal flows on the photosphere (flow speed about ...
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 solar mass (M ☉) is a standard unit of mass in astronomy, equal to approximately 2 × 10 30 kg (2 nonillion kilograms in US short scale). It is approximately equal to the mass of the Sun. It is often used to indicate the masses of other stars, as well as stellar clusters, nebulae, galaxies and black holes. More precisely, the mass of the ...
In solar physics, a prominence, sometimes referred to as a filament, [a] is a large plasma and magnetic field structure extending outward from the Sun's surface, often in a loop shape. Prominences are anchored to the Sun's surface in the much brighter photosphere , and extend outwards into the solar corona .