AS101 Lecture 4: AS101PART4
Document Summary
Over 90 elements in the sun have been identified by studying the lines in its spectrum. The most abundant elements include: hydrogen, helium, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, neon, magnesium, silicon, sulphur and iron) Dr. cecilia payne used the new techniques of quantum mechanics to derive accurate chemical abundances for the sun and other stars. She was the first person to know that the sun is mostly composed of hydrogen. Solar filaments are dark lines or curves that sometimes appear in pictures of the sun. Filaments are actually huge arcs of plasma (electrified gas) in the sun"s atmosphere. They look dark because they are not as hot as the sun"s surface behind them. Filtergram: a photograph (usually of the sun) taken in the light of specific region of the spectrum. The coronal temperature ranges from million kelvin just about the photosphere to 2 million kelvin or more in the outer corona.
