How does the sun's atmosphere affect the planets?

Question

Michael Adkins · Accepted Answer

Actually, our Sun doesn't really have an atmosphere in the sense we know it and apply to other celestial objects.

The photosphere, the area near the Sun's surface where almost all visible light is emitted, the convection zone, where the Sun's matter is constantly moving, the radiation zone, where energy travels outward in the form of electromagnetic radiation, and the core, where nuclear reactions produce energy, are the sections of the Sun that go from the outermost to the core. The Sun's thin, hot upper atmosphere, the solar corona, is located above the transition zone. At a distance of approximately 15 solar radii (away from the core), the gas in the corona is hot enough to escape the Sun's gravity and the corona starts to flow outward as solar wind. The chromosphere is the lower "atmosphere" of the Sun, and it is located above the photosphere. The majority of the solar wind flows outward from low-density regions of the corona called coronal holes. This solar wind is highly ionized and poses a great danger to bodies without a stable magnetic field (from a stable, rotating ferromagnetic core) as the solar wind will completely destroy (ionize, in the sense where life cannot exist) any good chance of life forming. The planets are affected by the solar wind. Large, blobs of magnetized gas occasionally escape into interplanetary space as coronal mass ejections. The solar wind also affects planetary atmospheres, but that is a topic for another day because I believe this response is already far too lengthy.

Ian Ashcroft · Answer

undefined Solar radiation affects temperature and composition of planetary atmospheres; variations in atmospheric density, weather patterns, auroras, and variations in atmospheric pressure are all caused by the Sun's atmosphere, especially the solar wind, which shapes the magnetospheres of planets.