Lecture Notes No:1

Title : The sun and the Earth

The Sun:
- is basically a sphere in shape.
- Contains intensely hot gases matter within it.
- It has a diameter of 1.39x10
9
m or 13.9x10
5
km.
- Distance between the earth and sun is around 1.5x10
11
m
- It rotates its own axis about 4 weeks.
- Its black body temperature is in the order of 5762 K
- Temperature of the inner core of the sun is estimated between
8x10
6
to 40x10
6
K
- Density is 1000 times than the water (Plasma).
- It contains 80% of hydrogen (H2)and 19% of the helium (He).
- Remaining may be 100 plus observed elements makesup the tiny
fraction of this composition of the sun.
- The source of the sun energy may be due to hydrogen to helium in
the thermonuclear fusion reaction.

Anatomy of the sun:

Core:
- 90% of the sun energy generated from this region
- It distance range is 0 to 0.23 R (where R is the radius of the sun).
- It temperature range is around 8 to 40 x10
6
K.
1
2
3
4
5
6
Solar wind
Corona
Chromosphere
Photosphere
Convective shell
Radioactive shell
Core
- Pressure is around 10
9
atm.
- Its density is around 100 g/cc or 1,00,000 kg/m
3
.
- It contains 40% of the mass of the sun.
- It occupies around 15% of the volume of the sun.

Radioactive shell:
- it is at a distance of 0.7 R from the centre of the sun.
- the temperature across this region is around 1,30,000 K.
- its density drop across this region is around 70 kg/m
3
.
- After this region, (ie) the outer layer of this region is starts with
convective shell.

Convective Shell:
- it is very important region of the sun.
- The convection process begins from this region.
- It range is 0.7 R to 1R.
- Within this region, the temperature drop is around 5000 K.
- The density drop across this region is about 10
-5
kg/m
3
.
- Usually the sunspots are appeared in this region only.
- The outer most layer of this region is photosphere.
Sunspots:
- it is a temporary phenomenon on the photosphere of the sun.
- this appears visibly as dark compared to its surrounding areas,
- these are caused by the inverse magnetic activity which inhibits
convection by an effect comparable to eddy current brake, forming
the area of the reduced surface temperature.
- The temperature of this spot is around 3000 to 4000 K whereas
surrounding temperature is around adiabatic flame temperature is
about 5780 K.
- If the sunspot is isolated from the surrounding materials, it would
be brighter than the electric arc.
- It can expands or contracts as they move across the surface of the
sun.
- Max sunspot identified appears and viewed from the earth is
around 80,000 km.
- Its relative speed of its travel is few hundred miles per second.

Photopshere:
- The edge of the photosphere is sharply defined.
- It is in the range of 1.015 R.
- The temperature across this region is around 5000 K to 10
6
K.
- It density of the gases in this layer are in the range of 10
-8
to 10
-4

g/cc.
- It is composed of the gases are strongly ionized and able to absorb
and emit a continuous spectrum of radiation.
- It is the source of the most of the solar radiation.
- The outer most layer of the photosphere is called chromosphere.

Chromosphere:
- it is more or less transparent atmosphere.
- It can be observed during the solar eclipse or by instrumental that
obscure the solar disk.
- Above the photosphere, there is layer of cooler gases for several
hundred kilometers deep, called the reversing layer.
- It temperature are in the region is 10
6
K.
- This temperature range prevails upto the layer of corona.
- It density across this layer is very low (10
-4
to 10
-6
g/cc).
- It distance depth about 10,000 km.
- The outer lost layer of this region is corona.

Corona:
- it is of very low density.
- Its temperature is in the high range of about 10
6
K.
- This corona can be seen only during the solar eclipse.

The Earth:
- it shaped as an oblate spheroid. (ie) a sphere flattened at the poles
and bulging in the plane normal to the poles.
- It can be assumed as sphere for many practical purposes.
- It diameter is about 12,800 km at the equatorial plane.
- It has circumferential distances at:
Equatorial plane is 40,075.17 km
Meridionial plane is 40,007.86 km
- the surface area of the earth is:
total area is about 510,072,000 km
2

land area is about 148,292,000 km
2
- 29.2%
water area is about 361, 780,000 km
2
70.8%.
- it makes one rotation about its own axis in every 24 hours.
- It completes a revolution around the sun in a period of approx.
365.25 days.
- The mean density of the earth is 5.517 g/cm
3
.
- It has a central core of about 2,560 km in diameter which is more
rigid than steel.
- Beyond this core, there is mantle, which forms about 70% of the
earths mass.
- Beyond this is the outer layer of the earth is so called crust, which
forms about 1% of the earths mass.
- The earth revolves the sun in an elliptic orbit with latter at one of
its foci of the ellipse.
- The apparent path of the sun s seen from the earth is known as
ecliptic.
- The eccentricity of the earths orbit is such that the distance
between the sun and earth varies by 1.7%.
- The mean sun-earth distance is 1.495x10
11
km.



Sun-earth distance:



SUN
1.495 X 10
11
m 1.7%
1.39x10
9
m
1.27x10
7
m
32
EARTH
Black body Radiation:

- The energy density of the radiation emitted at a given wave length
(monochromatic) by a perfect radiations, usually called a black
body.
- 2 5 ) T / C (
1
b
n ) 1 e (
C
E
2

- Where,
Eb = Monochromotaic emissive power of the black
body.
C1 = 3.74 x 10
8
W. m
4
/m
2

C2 = 1.44 x 10
4
m K
n = Refractive index of the medium
For vacuum n=1:
For air taken to be n=1.

- Monochromotic emissive power means energy emitted by a perfect
radiator per unit wave length at the specified wave length per unit area
per unit time at the temperature T.

- Now, the total energy emitted by the black body is integrating the
above equation over wavelengths,

d E E
0
b b

Where,
Eb = total emissive power of the black body in W/m
2


The total Energy emitted by the sun from its outer surface is given by,

4
s s b
T * A * * E

Where,
= Stefan Boltzmanns constant = 5.67x10
-8
W/m
2
K
4

T = Suns outer surface absolute temperature in K.
= Emissivity of the sun
A = Surface Area of the sun in m
2


Why do we need the solar energy?

Ans:
- is the worlds most abundant permanent source of the energy.
- Amount of this energy intercepted by the earth is about 5,000
times greater than the sum of the other forms of energy sources
(like nuclear, geothermal, gravitational energies, lunar gravitational
energy etc.,)
- Out of this energy intercepted,
30% of the energy is reflected back to space.
47% is converted to low temperature heat and again
reradiated back to space.
23% is used for evaporation and precipitation of
biosphere.
Less than 0.5% is represented in the KE of the wind
and waves
Remaining amount are stored in the forms of
photosynthesis in plants.
- The total terrestrial radiation is only about one third of the
extraterrestrial radiation total during a year.
- 70% of the energy falls on the ocean
- Only 1.5x10
17
kW hr falls on the land =
= Which is equal to 6,000 times the total energy usage
of USA IN 2000.