ASTR 110G Chapter Notes - Chapter 15.1: Solar Transition Region, Magnesium, Stellar Atmosphere
Document Summary
The sun, like all stars, is an enormous ball of extremely hot, largely ionized gas, shining under its own power. The sun does not have a solid surface but it does have a lot of structure and can be discussed as a series of layers. It turns out that the sun contains the same elements as earth but not in the same proportions. The 10 most abundant gases in the sun"s visible surface layer include: At the time, she wrote, "the enormous abundance derived for these elements in the stellar atmosphere is almost certainly not real. " In fact, the sun is so hot that many of the atoms in it are ionized, that is, stripped of one or more of their electrons. This removal of electrons from their atoms mean that there is a large quantity of free electrons and positively charged ions in the sun, making it an electrically charged environment.
