| Because our star appears so close and so familiar to
us, one might think that the astrophysicists have nothing
more to discover about the Sun. This is far from the truth:
many aspects of the Sun still remain poorly understood
and are the subject of active and high technology research.
Among these fields of research, one can quote the
study of the physical conditions inside the Sun (temperature,
density, chemical composition) (video
1, picture 1), the determination of the magnetic
field and its role in the formation of sunspots
(video 2, picture 2 & 3),
the detection of solar neutrinos
(particles that are emitted from the core of the
Sun, and which hardly interact with the matter), the
heating mechanism of the chromosphere
and of the solar corona) (picture
4) (external parts of the Sun), regions where
the temperature can reach millions of degrees, whereas
at the visible surface of the Sun the temperature is
only 6000 degrees.
All these studies provide a possibility of a better
understanding of our “daystar”, as well
as of all the other stars observed in the l'Universe.
Indeed, our Sun is just a star among all the others;
its chemical composition is therefore used as a reference
for the study of all the other stars in the Universe.
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