• Question: What is the temperature of our sun? Do you think it will ever explode?

    Asked by anon-252948 to seancollins, Megan on 5 May 2020. This question was also asked by anon-255015.
    • Photo: Megan Maunder

      Megan Maunder answered on 5 May 2020:

      The temperature of the Sun’s corona, which is kind of like its atmosphere, is around 5,500 degrees Celsius, the core of the Sun is much hotter, around 15,000,000 degrees Celsius.

      In the sense of supernova, no the Sun will probably not explode, it’s not big enough. Once our Sun runs out of hydrogen which is its fuel, it will swell to a red giant, then collapse to a white dwarf.

Comments

  • Photo: Mark

    Mark commented on :

    As Megan said re: temperatures. Sunspots however are a little cooler, at ~3500K. These are created when the Sun’s magnetic field breaks from the surface, disrupting convection. Interestingly, the atmosphere of the Sun, or the corona, the temperature suddenly rises again to ~10^6K. There are space-based telescopes trying to figure out why this is. An interesting fact; the hottest place in the solar system isn’t the Sun but in Culham, Oxfordhire at JET, the Joint European Torus.
    Astronomers believe that stars will only explode at what is known as the Chandrasekhar mass, or above. This is 1.4 x the solar mass, the Sun being 1.99×10^30kg. Stars below this mass will expand into red giants when their hydrogen is used up, then shrink to become a white dwarf, the hot core of a star ‘fuelled’ by electron degeneracy. They will maintain their original mass but will be very dense, being about the size of Earth. Stars over and above the Chandrasekhar mass could go super nova but typically, they will collapse to become either a neutron star ora black hole.