• Question: How hot is the sun?

    Asked by anon-219749 to Ali, Bella, Declan, Emma, Laurence, Nicolas on 7 Jun 2019.
    • Photo: Laurence Datrier

      Laurence Datrier answered on 7 Jun 2019:

      It depends what part of the Sun you’re looking at! Usually people will quote the temperature of the visible surface of the Sun (the photosphere), which is 5,778 Kelvin, or 5,505 degrees Celsius. However the Sun has many layers which all have different temperatures. The core of the Sun is 15 million K! The temperature goes down until you reach the photosphere, then goes up again into the chromosphere and the corona, up to 2 million K! The corona is the bright halo you see during a solar eclipse.

    • Photo: Ali Hussain

      Ali Hussain answered on 10 Jun 2019:

      Hotter than any of the fires I have been to and hot enough to give you a tan when it’s 150 million kilometers away.

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