What does the Sun's surface look like close up?

I know that the Sun is mostly gas, but I want to know how the Sun looks like when you are really close up like lets say you were standing about 10 feet from the "surface" of the Sun. All I seen pics of the Sun are just only a few million miles away. I want a real close up. What kind of "surface" are we talking about, water like surface? Lava like surface?

[edit on 10-2-2006 by deltaboy]

You might want to look here. There are many closer-up pictures of the sun's surface in different spectrums....

sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov...

and the following might help as well

sci.esa.int...

Thanks for the links, but I still want a really really true close up of the Sun. Like an actual image of showing the surface. Kind of like you see Earth from millions of miles away that shows mostly blue, but you want to see the surface from 10 feet away.

I don't know if any pictures like that exist.
I'd like to see them myself, but the problem (I would think) would be that the sun itself is so bright, it would overload any "normal" camera like I think you are talking about.

I don't think there is a "surface". I'm pretty sure it's just a big ball of gas, although I may have not been paying attention in science class the day the teacher discussed a "surface" of the Sun. I might have been playing paper football or shooting spitwads.

Peace

Here's a few.


external image


external image

Looks like a bubbling cauldrin of lava. Very cool.

Looks like a root beer float....hmmm...


[edit on 2-10-2006 by WolfofWar]

Thats better. Thank you very much. Now there is something that helps answer my curiousity about the surface of the sun. As well as most or all stars I believe.

Pretty cool sensfan, thank you.

Do you have a link to any more of these?

That firs pic with those arcs is taken by TRACE and covers very narrow wavelegth range... those arcs show place of magnetic field lines. (those lines rising from sunspots)
Second pic is propably H-alfa image


antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov...

external image

external image
external image
external image

trace.lmsal.com...

Kind of looks like level 4 on Diablo II

Well, during my half-year university course on cosmology, we studied the Sun. The close-up of the "bubbling" surface of the Sun is the best one in this thread. Every bubble is called a granule.

Basically, it's like boiling water. You have the same kind of heat-transfers, but with the added strangeness that plasma and magnetic fields bring (plasma - being what the sun is "made" of - is affected by magnetic fields, and so adds a new depth to the "environment" of the sun that isn't fully understood). The heat from within escapes along convection currents. This creates the bubble-like granule.

Really the surface is in constant motion, and is constantly changing, and it looks crazy cool. Essentially, though, it's like watching the craziest pot of boiling water that you've ever seen.

And remember, the Sun isn't really a gas - it's a plasma. The atoms of stripped of their electrons because of the intense heat. The sun itself is condensed plasma - and so functions like a liquid. So, if you didn't die/vapourize/melt, you could "swim" on the surface of the Sun.

Of course, gravity would pull you down, and you'd then be crushed by the crazy pressures. It's not like you can be bouyant in it.

The real question is, what's the core like? Is it a semi-plasma-solid? Is it like the surface of the sun? I think that's a more interesting question, but, like trying to observe the surface of the Earth's core, is likely one that we won't really be figuring out any time soon.

I have a feeling those pictures aren't real but just fancy 3d rendering of what the "surface" would look like.

external image
Ohhh, they're real!

That first pic that E_T posted looks like a devil-angel or something.

That SOHO site is really cool, you can download a sun screensaver there that updates itself.

honestly what do you think the suns surface looks like? like a lake of lava with solar flares and explosions all over the place thats what. that has to be the eeeasiest question ive ever heard in my life, its a sun people.

Here's a few more to add to the mix, including some high-res downloads:

www.space.com...

It's important to note that even these high-res images only show details to about the 100km scale, so unless the sun's features are fractal-like, we really don't know what the surface of the sun looks like in close-up, "standing on the surface" scale.



external image

Just in case you are not aware, there is a theory floating around just now about the Sun having a fairly solid surface. I read a lengthy PDF article on the theory (complete with pictures) and was impressed with the reasoning behind the statements in the article. While I'm not convinced there is indeed a "solid" surface to the Sun beneath the parts we can see, there is ample evidence to support several differentiated plasma layers of different densities. The most dense of these layers could act more like a solid than a liquid or a gas and that is what I believe represents the true situation.

Here is alink to the article: www.thesurfaceofthesun.com...

[edit on 26-2-2006 by Astronomer68]

Core is probably solid, why Black Holes can exist, they are solid dense mass, or the other theory is they are actual holes, but I like the dense solid mass better, like a giant ball that weighs 100tons set on a rubber mat then taken off and the same mass being shrank down to the size of a marble. The dent in the mat still exists and represents the gravitational pull of the marble sized object, if you roll another marble and it rolls into the dent it falls in, even though the mass is no longer there.

At least that's how it was explained to me.

When I see how unstable that looks, it scares the crap out of me. Good pics though.

From the pictures I've seen, it looks alot like a boiling pot of sugar water.

As in, prep to make candy.