Frank Spinosa, Age 14, Of West Somerville, Mass., for his question:
How far do gases shoot out from the sun?
The diameter of the sun is estimated to be 864,000 miles more than 30 times the diameter of the earth. But this measurement does not include the restless gases of the sun's atmosphere. Sometimes gases of the pale corona reach seven million miles above the surface of the sun. Other solar fireworks shoot up a million miles, and some solar particles reach much farther.
The surface of the sun is so brilliant that it out dazzles the seething atmosphere above it, in the past, the blazing events in the solar atmosphere could be studied only during a total eclipse. The dazzling face of the sun is then blotted out by the dark disk of the moon, and the surrounding atmosphere can be seen as a halo.
Since 1930, scientists have used a coronagraph to blot out the sun with a man made eclipse. With this instrument, astronomers can study at any time the activity in the gases of the sun's atmosphere. Blazing upheavals are constantly erupting in the chromosphere level of the atmosphere, and shafts of pale gases stream forth from the outer corona.
The chromosphere level of gases envelops the sun to a height of 6000 miles or more. This restless shell gets its red color from incandescent hydrogen, it erupts with spouting fountains and flaming flares, with spiraling filaments and lacy streamers. Some of these solar prominences occur near sunspots.
A quiet or quiescent solor prominence rises from a base of perhaps 1000 square miles and shoots its blazing gases 15,000 to 30,000 miles above the sun. There it may hover like a flaming haystack for several weeks. An eruptive prominence may flare up at 200 miles a second and carry its flames 500,000 to a million miles above the sun.
Above the restless chromosphere is the pearly corona of the sun's upper atmosphere. Its hazy outline is uneven add spiked with plumes called solar jets. The tenuous gases of the corona may reach up seven million miles. But this distance is a mere step compared with certain gaseous particles which stream from the sun. These ionized particles of gas erupt near sunspots and stream at least 93 million miles across space. They reach the earth's upper atmosphere where they cause the shimmering auroras. The sun's gases, then, can reach the earth, but how much farther we do not know.
The thin gases of the corona shift up and down in season with the sunspot cycle. Some of the prominences spout up from the normal activity of the sun. The blazing solar flares spring from sunspot activity. This same sunspot activity produces the ionized particles that stream forth as far as the earth and perhaps beyond.