Welcome to You Ask Andy

Janet Criger, age 11 of St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada, for her question:

Does the sun have an atmosphere?

The entire sun is a sphere of seething gases. For this reason, it would seem hard to tell where the surface ends and the atmosphere begins. Actually, it is not such a problem. True, the surface is a seething turmoil of gases. But they are dense enough to hold the surface in shape. The gases above this clearly defined level are , very much thinner. They do indeed form an atmosphere around the sun.

The lowest level of the solar atmosphere is almost transparent. Its gases affect the color spectrum of the sun and for this reason it is called the chromosphere, or color sphere. It reaches about 10,000 miles above the surface. The outer layer of the solar atmosphere is the pale, pearly corona that reaches several million miles out into space.

 ¿Tiene el sol una atmósfera?

El sol entero es una esfera de la borbotar gases. Por esta razón, parecería decirlo duramente que los fines de superficie y la atmósfera empiezan. Realmente, no es tal problema. Verdadero, la superficie es una confusión que borbota de gases. Pero ellos son suficiente densos para tener la superficie en la forma. Los gases encima de este nivel claramente definido son, tanto más delgado. Ellos forman verdaderamente una atmósfera alrededor del sol.

El nivel más bajo de la atmósfera solar es casi transparente. Sus gases afectan el espectro de color del sol y para esta razón es llamada la cromosfera, o esfera de color. Alcanza aproximadamente 10.000 millas encima de la superficie. La capa exterior de la atmósfera solar es la corona pálida y color de perla que alcanza varios millones de millas  en el espacio.

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