Q&A: The Sun has an outer atmosphere called the corona, which can be seen at the time of a total solar eclipse.?

Question by Nathan: The Sun has an outer atmosphere called the corona, which can be seen at the time of a total solar eclipse.?
The corona is known to be very hot and not
very dense. What would you expect see in the spectrum of the corona? Why?


Best answer:
Answer by Anthony DewarIf by hot you mean around 10,000 kelvin then the spectral lines would show strong excited hydrogen lines. This is a type A star.

If it's around 20,000 Kelvin, it would be a type B star and would have spectral lines of excited Hydrogen and excited Helium.

At around 30,000 Kelvin, the type O star will show excited Hydrogen lines and also Ionized Helium lines (He2)

The denser the star is the broader the spectral lines.

The less dense, the more narrow they are.

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This time the luck was not on my side. Clouds obscured the corona most time during totallity. Because of the bad weather we decided to go to Wuhan instead of watching the eclipse from the Shanghai area as planed. I read reports that the corona was visible some km north of the city of Wuhan, others saw it some km south of the city. I was near the city center and had to deal with a field of thick Altocumulus clouds, which allowed us to see second contact, but the corona did not make it through, despite of about 10 seconds. But it was very hard to see and not comparable to the beautiful eclipses 2006 and 2008.
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