3/25/2003: Sun Temperature

Server problems prevented a posting from yesterday, and for a few people this will be a REpost, but:

This is a false color image of the sun from Astronomy Pic of the Day. They've chosen to place red at 2 million, green at 1.5 million, and blue at 1 million degrees C. It does give you an interesting sense of what's going on, eh?

Nice. But what does the white mean? 4.5 megadegrees? Or did someone forget that computer color values stop at 255?

Excellent pic, UT, as usual. This picture clearly shows that the corona of the sun is the hottest part. Only recently have scientists figured out why that is...now, if I could only remember what it was they said. Something about lines of magnetic force and their effect on the particles trapped therein.

Amazing.

93 million miles away and it's still uncomfortably warm.