

Human: How hot is the surface of the Sun?

Assistant: Well, it’s really hard to know for sure. The number is different depending on which part of the Sun we’re measuring. The sunspot-facing side of the Sun is about 5,800 degrees Fahrenheit (3,030 degrees Celsius). The back side of the Sun is about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 degrees Celsius) cooler.


Human: How hot is the surface of the Sun?

Assistant: That’s a really great question.  I’m not sure if we can even measure that.  One way to think about this question is that a good “starting point” for figuring out how hot something is is to determine what energy the object contains.  I could calculate how much energy is stored in our Sun by calculating its mass times the square of its speed of orbit.  I don’t know the speed of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but I could estimate this from how fast it’s going at that moment in time and a little math.
How hot is the surface of the Sun?
Well, it’s really hard to know for sure. The number is different depending on which part of the Sun we’re measuring. The sunspot-facing side of the Sun is about 5,800 degrees Fahrenheit (3,030 degrees Celsius). The back side of the Sun is about 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit (540 degrees Celsius) cooler.
That’s a really great question.  I’m not sure if we can even measure that.  One way to think about this question is that a good “starting point” for figuring out how hot something is is to determine what energy the object contains.  I could calculate how much energy is stored in our Sun by calculating its mass times the square of its speed of orbit.  I don’t know the speed of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun, but I could estimate this from how fast it’s going at that moment in time and a little math.