What kind of celestial body is the sun

The size of Apophis was the major concern. Even a small chance that an asteroid the size of a small town hitting the Earth rightly caused a large commotion. It achieved the highest score ever on the Torino scale and it stayed on an elevated level for longer than any other asteroid ever has.

It was eventually studied enough to know that it would not hit the Earth in The asteroid will pass again in Scientists predict that it will not hit the Earth, but it may pass through a gravitational keyhole that could alter its orbit enough that it could impact in The chances are slight, but real. Scientists have proposed that Apophis be nudged out of its present orbit into an orbit that takes it further from the keyhole.

And such a deflection is far beyond present technology for an asteroid this large. Many things can make a celestial body interesting. Everyone has their favorites.

Mine happen to be the five I have listed. Each can be further researched here on Universe Today. Sun to Arcturus. Betelgeuse and Antares. Messenger of the gods. High-Resolution Image of Mercury. Goddess of love and beauty.

High-Resolution Image of Venus. Old English word. The only planet not named after a god. High-Resolution Image of Earth. God of war. Fourth planet from the Sun and the seventh largest. When it is close, it is easy to see a white polar cap and dark features on the lower latitudes.

Mars has two very small moons which are very close to the surface of the planet. Their names are Phobos and Deimos Fear and Terror. High-Resolution Image of Mars. King of the gods. Fifth planet from the Sun and the largest. Unlike Earth, which has one round moon, Saturn has 53 moons — even more cool!

Take a look at Atlas, for example. It's shaped like a flying saucer or, maybe ravioli? An asteroid is basically a rock that is floating around in space. Asteroids are cool because they orbit around the sun like a planet. What makes the asteroid BZ interesting is how it moves.

Most things in our solar system travel clockwise around the sun, but not this little fellow. Moving outward, in the convection zone, the temperature drops below 3. Here, large bubbles of hot plasma a soup of ionized atoms move upward toward the photosphere, which is the layer we think of as the Sun's surface. The part of the Sun commonly called its surface is the photosphere. The word photosphere means "light sphere" — which is apt because this is the layer that emits the most visible light.

Hopefully, it goes without saying — but never look directly at the Sun without protecting your eyes. Although we call it the surface, the photosphere is actually the first layer of the solar atmosphere. It's about miles thick, with temperatures reaching about 10, degrees Fahrenheit 5, degrees Celsius. That's much cooler than the blazing core, but it's still hot enough to make carbon — like diamonds and graphite — not just melt, but boil.

Most of the Sun's radiation escapes outward from the photosphere into space. Above the photosphere is the chromosphere, the transition zone, and the corona. Not all scientists refer to the transition zone as its own region — it is simply the thin layer where the chromosphere rapidly heats and becomes the corona.

Visible light from these top regions of the Sun is usually too weak to be seen against the brighter photosphere, but during total solar eclipses, when the Moon covers the photosphere, the chromosphere looks like a fine, red rim around the Sun, while the corona forms a beautiful white crown "corona" means crown in Latin and Spanish with plasma streamers narrowing outward, forming shapes that look like flower petals.

Imagine walking away from a bonfire only to get warmer. The source of coronal heating is a major unsolved puzzle in the study of the Sun. The Sun generates magnetic fields that extend out into space to form the interplanetary magnetic field — the magnetic field that pervades our solar system.

The field is carried through the solar system by the solar wind — a stream of electrically charged gas blowing outward from the Sun in all directions. Since the Sun rotates, the magnetic field spins out into a large rotating spiral, known as the Parker spiral. This spiral has a shape something like the pattern of water from a rotating garden sprinkler. The Sun doesn't behave the same way all the time. It goes through phases of high and low activity, which make up the solar cycle.

During this cycle, the Sun's photosphere, chromosphere, and corona change from quiet and calm to violently active. Sunspots, eruptions called solar flares, and coronal mass ejections are common at solar maximum. Solar activity can release huge amounts of energy and particles, some of which impact us here on Earth.

It also can cripple power grids , and corrode pipelines that carry oil and gas. The strongest geomagnetic storm on record is the Carrington Event , named for British astronomer Richard Carrington who observed the Sept.