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Old 08-10-2009, 03:55 PM  
milambur
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dav3 View Post
The points that made the most sense to me and got me stuck on this topic, are the sunspots and the corona.

If sunspots are pretty much like a void in the surface, why do they appear darker? Shouldn't the closer you get to the nuclear furnaces core be brighter?

Why is the corona hotter? Should the surface of a nuclear furnace be hotter than the photosphere around it?

I am definitely not anywhere close to being a cosmologist, but these seem like good questions that piqued interest to me.
Sunspots aren't voids, they are areas on the sun that are a bit cooler than the rest of the surface due to magnetic activity. Actually they are still over 4 000 kelvin hot.

The corona is most likely so hot due to the magnetic field are able to accelerate atoms/ions to extreme speeds, that can't occur on the actual surface since the density is a trillion times higher.
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