Is it possible to measure the temperature of the Sun?

Is it possible to measure the temperature of the Sun? If so, how?

It is possible to measure the surface temperature of the Sun by direct experiment.

The Sun is a big ball of hot gas that holds itself up by fusing hydrogen nuclei into helium nuclei in its central regions. In order for these reactions to take place, the temperature in the core has to be about 10 million degrees Celsius. We can use our theoretical understanding of the way the Sun works to model the actual central temperature: the current number is 15.71 million degrees Kelvin (0 Kelvin = -273 Celsius).

The light from the Sun that we see is "made" deep in the Sun's interior - it then bounces around inside the Sun and gradually makes its way out. We call the surface of the Sun the mean distance from the core at which the light bounces for the last time before coming out (remember that unlike the Earth the Sun has no solid surface, so we have to define it somehow!). It turns out that the light we see from the surface has nearly the spectrum of a blackbody: a blackbody is a physical term that means that the fraction of light that is emitted at each wavelength is a function of the surface temperature alone. This is great for us, because it means that we can measure the spectrum of the Sun, and then fit it with a blackbody spectrum to derive the temperature. For a picture of the Sun's spectrum, look here.

From the solar spectrum, we can infer that the surface temperature of the Sun is about 5880 Kelvin, or 5605 Celsius.

February 2006 addition by Shannon. Here is a fun website that lets you choose a blackbody temperature, and compare the blackbody curve for that temperature to the solar spectrum. What temperature do you think gives the best fit to the solar spectrum?

May 2002, Shannon Gutenkunst (more by Shannon Gutenkunst) (Like this Answer), Kristine Spekkens (more by Kristine Spekkens) (Like this Answer)

Still Curious?

Get More 'Curious?' with Our New PODCAST:

Related questions:

More questions about The Sun: Previous | Next

How to ask a question:

If you have a follow-up question concerning the above subject, submit it here. If you have a question about another area of astronomy, find the topic you're interested in from the archive on our site menu, or go here for help.

URL: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=126
This page has been accessed 58630 times since June 11, 2002.
Last modified: February 12, 2006 2:06:42 PM

Legal questions? See our copyright, disclaimer and privacy policy.
Ask an Astronomer is hosted by the Astronomy Department at Cornell University and is produced with PHP and MySQL.