Sunspots, Solar Flares, Coronal Mass Ejections and their influence on Earth: Coronal Mass Ejections (shown left) and solar flares are extremely large explosions on the photosphere. Sunspots are quite large as an average size is about the same size as the Earth. The sunspots appear relatively dark because the surrounding surface of the Sun (the photosphere) is about 10,000 degrees F., while the umbra is about 6,300 degrees F. A typical spot consists of a dark region called the umbra, surrounded by a lighter region known as the penumbra. Sunspots tend to occur in pairs that have magnetic fields pointing in opposite directions. This in turn lowers the temperature relative to its surroundings because the concentrated magnetic field inhibits the flow of hot, new gas from the Sun's interior to the surface. Because of the strong magnetic field, the magnetic pressure increases while the surrounding atmospheric pressure decreases. Sunspots are areas where the magnetic field is about 2,500 times stronger than Earth's, much higher than anywhere else on the Sun. Sunspots: One interesting aspect of the Sun is its sunspots. After the red giant phase, the Sun will shrink to a white dwarf star (about the size of the Earth) and slowly cool for several billion more years. The Sun at this point will be a "red giant" and 10,000 times brighter than its present luminosity. When the hydrogen is exhausted, the Sun's temperature at the surface will begin to cool and the outer layers will expand outward to near the orbit of Mars. This took roughly 4.5 billion years to accomplish. Right now, about half the amount of hydrogen in the core of the Sun has been fused into helium. Under these conditions, hydrogen atoms come so close together that they fuse. The Sun's core is an astonishing 29,000,000 degrees F., while the pressure is about 100 billion times the atmospheric pressure here on Earth. Can an increase or decrease in sunspot activityĪ typical star, the Sun has a diameter of approximately 865,000 miles (nearly 10 times larger than the diameter of Jupiter) and is composed primarily of hydrogen.
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