Question

What is the photosphere?

Answer 1

Hint: We can start by identifying the word “photosphere”. It comes under the branch of physics that deals with things after the earth’s atmosphere. In other words, it comes under the study of astronomy. We can then move onto explaining what it is and how it is formed or what are the constituent substances of the photosphere.

Complete answer:
Let us start by saying that photosphere is an astronomical term or a term that comes up in the field of astronomy.Photosphere is the outer covering of a star from which light and heat radiate. We can end up with this definition if we approach the word in two parts. That is, the word “photos” which means light and the word “sphere” which means a spherical covering.

A star is a main-sequence star almost all of its life. The layers of the main-sequence star are, the core, radiative zone, convective zone, a photosphere, a chromosphere and the corona. As we can see, the photosphere is the layer just after the corona. Corona is the layer of the star where a nuclear fusion reaction takes place. The photosphere is a hundred kilometer thick layer that often radiates visible light and infrared light and is white in color.

Therefore, the photosphere is the outer layer of the main sequence star.

Note: The photosphere of the sun is made up of convection cells which are also known as granules. The photosphere is the only layer of the sun that is visible. Most of the sun rays are emitted from the photosphere. These sun rays include both visible and infrared rays.