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]

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

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


[edit on 2-10-2006 by WolfofWar]

Pretty cool sensfan, thank you.

Do you have a link to any more of these?

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.

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.

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.