The closest star to our planet is the Sun. It is located at a distance of 149 million kilometers and has a diameter of more than 1.4 million km. Scientists have calculated the approximate age of the star - about five billion years. We are used to seeing this yellow dwarf in the form of a bright ball, but what does the sun really look like?
View from space
From space, our luminary looks different than from Earth. The astronauts claim that the star is actually not yellow, but white. This dazzling luminous ball is as if pressed into black space. Its light is bright, but it allows you to view other cosmic objects, including the moon and some planets. So what does the sun look like and is it possible to look at it in space? In fact, it is impossible to look at this dwarf without a special light filter, since its light can cause severe burns to the cornea.
If you look at the Sun through this optical device, you will see the stellar disk and the radiation around it, which is called the corona. The star itself has a temperature of more than two million Kelvin. Despite such high temperatures, her light helped form a unique climate on our planet.
Solar power
And what does the sun look like when viewed closely (by cosmic standards)? In this case, it allows you to consider the emissions of its energy. Powerful magnetic fields give rise to stunningly beautiful arcs hundreds of kilometers long. During periods of intense activity, the sun releases a huge amount of energy. On Earth, we can observe it in the form of aurora or receive distortion of radio signals.
In addition to energy arcs, spots are visible on the star. They differ from the rest of the star’s surface at a lower temperature. Because of this feature, the spots look darker: the temperature in these zones is about five thousand Kelvin. And the more spots, the stronger the activity of the Sun.
What does the sun really look like? This star does not have a clear border, although we see it with a ball. The visible surface is represented by a photosphere four hundred kilometers thick. Gradually, this layer passes into the convection zone. But since the distance to the Earth is too great, we do not see this stratification, but only the celestial star familiar to our view.
The sun is our enemy
The dwarf emits a large amount of radiation. On Earth, the atmosphere protects against it: the ozone layer does not pass gamma rays, which have a destructive effect on all living things.
In space, radiation penetrates everywhere, but astronauts are always protected from it, even when they are outside the station. They are saved by a specially equipped suit: it has special devices that protect against exposure to radiation.
Sun from other planets
Many are interested in how the luminary looks from the planets of our solar system. The largest it is seen from Mercury. From this planet, it seems almost three times larger than we see it. Interesting fact: due to the lack of atmosphere on Mercury, the yellow dwarf is seen in its true light - white. We see the Sun yellow only because of the refraction of its rays in the atmosphere, but it is worth going beyond it, and the ball appears in real form.
From Venus the Sun is not visible. Although many would like to know what the sun looks like in the photo from Venus. But this planet is densely covered with dense and light simply can not break through them. If we could see a star from Venus, then it would seem to just hover in the sky at one point. This is due to the very slow rotation of the planet around its axis.
From Mars, the Sun looks half as small as we see it. Here, the shade of the luminary is different: white with a slight violet shine. Due to the high dustiness, sunsets and sunrises have a blue tint, and not yellow-red, to which we are accustomed.
Naturally, the farther away from the star the planet is, the less the star appears on it. From some planets, the Sun looks like a very bright star in the night sky. But even this view does not mean that it is always night on distant planets. On Pluto, for example, there are four hundred times more light than ours from the moon on the full moon. Of course, you won’t be able to sunbathe under such lighting, but you can clearly see all the surroundings.
The sun at the time of death
While searching for the answer to the question: “What does the Sun look like from space?”, Few people thought about what awaits this star in the distant future. But it is not very rosy. According to scientists, after about five billion years, the dwarf will begin to decay: its size will increase until the outer layers reach the Earth’s orbit. And as a result of this expansion, the atmosphere of our Blue Planet will simply burn out. And the Sun itself will turn into a white dwarf, that is, it will become a dense and very hot space object.
Scientists believe that after rebirth, the Sun will look like HD 184738 - this is a star, weighing approximately like our sun. It is located in the constellation Cygnus. The telescope spotted orange and red hues caused by the burning of nitrogen and hydrogen. Such a life path is typical for small and medium stars.
NASA about the Sun
A few years ago, NASA launched a program to combine all the information received by different observatories about our star. By this time, scientists already had several million images of the dwarf.
Perhaps this is why NASA decided to collect all the most interesting images of the Sun and combine them in a video. In it you can see giant loops, spots and other mysterious phenomena, many of which are still not open.