If to take pictures of the Sun with the help of an ordinary camera, you get dull yellowish disk. If you do this when the light closer to the horizon, then added some red (only)because between you and the star will be more of the earth's atmosphere, scattering of waves in the blue part of the spectrum. Actually the Sun radiates in all colors, but yellow is the best of those that are visible to the naked eye.

Observations of the Sun on the waves of different lengths allow consideration of various aspects of the surface and atmosphere. (NASA image / SDO / Goddard Space Flight Center.)

Specialized tools ground and space telescopes, fortunately, allows to see the light in all its glory. Waves of different length carry the information about the different components of the Sun's surface and its atmosphere, allowing you to monitor the constant changes stars - using the spacecraft's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

For example, the yellow light on the length of 5 800 + stems mainly from material heated to about 5 700 C. the Extreme ultraviolet (+94) produced by atoms with a temperature of 6 300 000 °C, that is, at this length is convenient to look at solar flares.

We see what we see, just because the Sun is hot gas and the heat produced by the light - and in the incandescent lamp. But at the same time, the star has many atoms (helium, hydrogen, iron, and other) and a number of variations (ions) with different electrical charges, each of which emits at a particular wavelength at a certain temperature. Directories of these waves are compiled from the beginning of XX century and take hundreds of pages.

Solar telescopes use this fact in two ways. First, special tools (they are called spectrometers) see the different wavelengths simultaneously and can measure the degree of presence of each wavelength. This allows you to create temperature maps of the solar material that does not look like our normal maps, but as graphics.

Second, the tools that allow you to get more familiar image of the Sun, focus on the radiation of a single length - sometimes that is not visible to the naked eye. For example, on the spacecraft SDO installed device Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (AIA), which is available ten wavelengths. Each of them usually indicates one or two types of ions, although just over a long or short waves produced by other ions, is inherent in the overall picture. These lengths selected so that you can get an idea about all the parts of the solar atmosphere: 4 500 + is the Sun's surface, or photosphere; 1 700 surface and the chromosphere (just above the photosphere, where the temperature is rising); 1 600 - upper photosphere and the transition region between the solar chromosphere and corona (the highest layer of the solar atmosphere), where the temperature is growing very quickly; 304 - the chromosphere and transition region; 171 - corona during a lull, at this wavelength is visible also coronal loops; 193 - a little more than hot area of the crown, and more hot material solar flares; 211 - more hot, magnetically active area of the crown; 335 - hotter and more active; 94 - crown during solar flares; 131 is the most hot material flash.