Question 1- Describe the features of sunspots, explaining the theories that have been suggested for their location and behaviour on the Sun’s surface. Outline the cyclic nature of sunspot activity.
Features of Sunspots
The photosphere is the Sun’s most outer layer where light is radiated and it is around 5000 –6000 Kelvin. Sunspots appear on the photosphere and are around 1500 K cooler than their surroundings making them appear darker compared to the areas around it. The size of sunspots range from small spots, also known as pores which have a diameter of less than 1000km to groups of sunspots called clusters which can reach up to 100 000km in diameter. They also appear to have a dark centre called the umbra and surrounding it there is a region which is a lighter called the penumbra.
Sunspots also are known to be regions of intense magnetic activity. The magnetic fields have a strength up to 0.4 tesla while the Sun’s magnetic field strength is usually just 1x10-4 tesla.
Formation of Sunspots
Proposed by H.Babcock in 1961… Because the Sun is a ball of gas and not a solid, parts of the Sun can spin at different speeds. The rotation of the Sun takes 25 days in at the equator while near the poles one rotation takes around 36
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Ranging from gamma rays all the way to radio waves. Harmful rays such as X-rays and Gamma rays are absorbed by the oxygen and nitrogen gas in the upper most layers of the atmosphere. These radiations a have a high frequency making them dangerous to life forms. Ultraviolet radiation is absorbed by the ozone at about 100km altitude. Infra-red is absorbed by water vapour and carbon dioxide at an altitude of 20km. The wave lengths left are from the visible spectrum, near infra-red, microwaves and radio waves. Many of these waves are reflected back into space but the remaining near infra-red and visible light allows for enough solar energy to sustain plant life and warm the
The ozone layer is the one that protects living things from the pure ultraviolet rays of the sun.
Ultraviolet-B (UVB) radiation is a type of ultraviolet (means ‘beyond violet’) radiation that forms a part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Its primary natural source is the sun, but could also be emitted by artificial sources such as UVB lights, excimer lasers and fluorescents. Most UVB produced by sunlight is absorbed by oxygen in Earth’s atmosphere and forms the ozone layer of lower stratosphere. When the amount of ozone in the ozone layer is reduced, more UVB radiation reaches the surface of earth and can cause damaging effects to human health such as skin and eye, nevertheless UVB could also beneficial in some ways when it comes to produce vitamin D and used in medical devices.
In 1543 Nicholas Copernicus, a Polish Canon, published “On the Revolution of the Celestial Orbs”. The popular view is that Copernicus discovered that the earth revolves around the sun. The notion is as old as the ancient Greeks however. This work was entrusted by Copernicus to Osiander, a staunch Protestant who though the book would most likely be condemned and, as a result, the book would be condemned. Osiander therefore wrote a preface to the book, in which heliocentrism was presented only as a theory which would account for the movements of the planets more simply than geocentrism did, one that was not meant to be a definitive description of the heavens--something Copernicus did not intend. The preface was unsigned, and everyone took it to be the author’s. That Copernicus believed the helioocentric theory to be a true description of reality went largely unnoticed. In addition to the preface, this was partly because he still made reassuring use of Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles; he also borrowed from Aristotle the notion that the planets must move in circles because that is the only perfect form of motion.
When CFC molecules reach the stratosphere, the sun's radiation breaks it apart, freeing the chorine atom to destroy ozone molecules. The effect is a growing ozone hole which forms over Antarctica in October and usually lasts through mid November. During the annual ozone hole, the amount of UV radiation that reaches the Earth can double. Ozone depletion serves as a major health risk for human beings. The three primary health effects of ultraviolet radiation on human health are damage to the skin,eyes, and immune system.
Most of the light energy from the sun is emitted in wavelengths shorter than 4,000
The Sun is located at the center of our solar system and is orbited by eight major planets in our solar system which includes: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto even though it’s not considered a planet. The sun consists of 99.86% of the mass in the solar system. Also, due to its size, heat, and chemical makeup, it’s a medium-sized star and classified as a G2 dwarf. Based on the average lifespan of a G2 star, the current age of the sun is predicted to be 4.6 billion years.
Because the Sun has a surface temperature of about 5,800 Kelvin, it emits most of its energy as visible light. Because the Earth has a much lower average surface temperature of about 288 Kelvin, it emits most of its energy as infrared light. Greenhouse gasses are transparent to visible light, but partially block infrared light. Greenhouse gasses act like one-way valves, because they allow energy from the Sun to reach the surface as visible light, but they prevent energy from the planet from leaving as infrared radiation.
A star begins as nothing more than a very light distribution of interstellar gases and dust particles over a distance of a few dozen lightyears. Although there is extremely low pressure existing between stars, this distribution of gas exists instead of a true vacuum. If the density of gas becomes larger than .1 particles per cubic centimeter, the interstellar gas grows unstable. Any small deviation in density, and because it is impossible to have a perfectly even distribution in these clouds this is something that will naturally occur, and the area begins to contract. This happens because between about .1 and 1 particles per cubic centimeter, pressure gains an inverse relationship with density. This causes internal pressure to decrease with increasing density, which because of the higher external pressure, causes the density to continue to increase. This causes the gas in the interstellar medium to spontaneously collect into denser clouds. The denser clouds will contain molecular hydrogen (H2) and interstellar dust particles including carbon compounds, silicates, and small impure ice crystals. Also, within these clouds, there are 2 types of zones. There are H I zones, which contain neutral hydrogen and often have a temperature around 100 Kelvin (K), and there are H II zones, which contain ionized hydrogen and have a temperature around 10,000 K. The ionized hydrogen absorbs ultraviolet light from it’s environment and retransmits it as visible and infrared light. These clouds, visible to the human eye, have been named nebulae. The density in these nebulae is usually about 10 atoms per cubic centimeter. In brighter nebulae, there exists densities of up to several thousand atoms per cubic centimete...
In 1513, Nicholas Copernicus, composed a brief theory that stated that the sun is at rest and the earth is in rotation around the sun. In 1543, just days before his death, Copernicus published this theory in On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. This theory was meant to dissolve the long lived belief in Ptolemyís theory which stated, "The earth was at the center because it was the heaviest of objects(Kagan331)." This was a common belief at that time, which supported the religious beliefs that the earth was the center of the universe and God in the heavens were surrounding the earth. Copernicusís theory was shocking, but he published such a controversial theory without sufficient evidence, it had to be considered invalid.
Our sun is the central pivot point to which or entire planet and solar system is built around. With out it all life on our planet would cease to exist. Within this paper we will explore how our Sun and solar system formed and came to resemble what we see today.
A solar storm in general consists of three major kinds of solar activities – solar flares, solar proton events (SPE), and coronal mass ejection (CME) (Marusek 2007). These solar activities, sometimes happening together, can affect the Earth in various ways.
... You can think of solar winds as the external corona in an episode of continuous expansion. The solar wind is made of pretty much the same material as the lower corona or photosphere of the sun. Solar winds usually have lots of Hydrogen because Hydrogen tends to be attracted to solar winds. This is much unlike Helium because Helium is not attracted to solar winds. The sun loses little bits of energy because solar winds take atom parts (protons, and electrons) from it. Solar winds take over 1,000,000 tons worth of mass from the sun every second, but our sun’s mass is so much that this much mass is considered pretty much nothing. The sun’s heliosphere is taken over by solar winds. The solar winds have less and less pressure as it gets farther and farther from the sun. At 100 AU from the sun the solar winds cannot balance on their own because it is interstellar space.
...e sun, this is of a longer wavelength and is absorbed by the atmosphere. The Earths atmosphere, thus acts like the glass of a green house, hence the 'greenhouse effect'.
water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane. If there were no greenhouse gasses, very few rays