How to Use photosphere in a Sentence

photosphere

noun
  • The image on the right, acquired at the same time, is a kind of magnetic map of the photosphere.
    Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 20 Apr. 2014
  • This one shows the first images of the photosphere, the lowest layer of the sun's atmosphere.
    Jamie Carter, Forbes, 26 Dec. 2022
  • Where the rope comes up from the solar surface is one sunspot and where the rope plunges into the photosphere is another sunspot.
    Tom Yulsman, Discover Magazine, 23 July 2017
  • The shocks and pulsations blasted off a chunk of the photosphere, leaving a cool surface area under a cloud of dust.
    Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 12 Aug. 2022
  • The piece of Betelgeuse’s photosphere, which weighed several times as much as the moon, was released into space.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 12 Aug. 2022
  • If skies are clear, observers will be able to see the sun’s halo-like corona, which is usually obscured by the brightness of the photosphere.
    Deborah Netburn, latimes.com, 20 July 2017
  • Sunspots occur where intense magnetic field lines loop out through the churning photosphere and block the rise of hot granules.
    Brian T. Jacobs, National Geographic, 24 Aug. 2021
  • The plume created shocks and pulsations that triggered an eruption, peeling off a chunk of the star’s outer shell called the photosphere.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 12 Aug. 2022
  • The scientists paired this data with measurements of the photosphere in the same stretch of the sun taken by the co-observing Hinode satellite.
    Chris Wright, Wired, 15 Mar. 2021
  • The visible surface of the sun, the photosphere, has a temperature of about 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit.
    William Harwood, CBS News, 31 May 2017
  • As far as is known, no comets have ever actually been seen to hit the solar surface, or the photosphere, the European Space Agency said.
    Katie Hunt, CNN, 21 Dec. 2020
  • Like water boiling in a pot, plasma cells, or granules, carry heat to the sun’s glowing and visible surface, the photosphere.
    Brian T. Jacobs, National Geographic, 24 Aug. 2021
  • Even when 99 percent of the sun's surface (the photosphere) is obscured during the partial phases of a solar eclipse, the remaining crescent Sun is still intense enough to cause a retinal burn.
    Leada Gore, AL.com, 4 Aug. 2017
  • At its peak, the photosphere was moving at around 7 kilometers per second, reversing the outward push as the dimming of the star became more dramatic.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Wired, 18 June 2021
  • The resulting shocks and pulsations were powerful enough to produce an SME, blasting a massive chunk of the star's photosphere into space.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Ars Technica, 12 Aug. 2022
  • That material came from the planet itself, which likely passed through the star’s outer photosphere before falling to its demise.
    Matt Hrodey, Discover Magazine, 11 May 2023
  • These Texas-size granules cover nearly the entire photosphere.
    Brian T. Jacobs, National Geographic, 24 Aug. 2021
  • These are where large, beautiful plasma loops — commonly seen as solar prominences — extend far away from the Sun’s photosphere and can even enter the Sun’s corona.
    Ethan Siegel, Forbes, 8 June 2021
  • By the time this acceleration reached its peak, the photosphere was moving at about seven kilometers a second.
    John Timmer, Ars Technica, 14 Aug. 2020
  • But just a few hundred miles above the photosphere, in the star's corona, the temperature suddenly jumps to several million degrees.
    William Harwood, CBS News, 31 May 2017
  • This type of photography is an incredible challenge due to the overwhelming light of the photosphere below.
    Mike Wehner, BGR, 8 Mar. 2021
  • Coronal mass ejections are the largest, connecting the photosphere to the corona, where reconnection can cause an enormous release of energy.
    Ethan Siegel, Forbes, 8 June 2021
  • The photosphere appears black at these wavelengths, because that region is not nearly hot enough to shine brightly in extreme ultraviolet.
    Corey S Powell, Discover Magazine, 11 Aug. 2013
  • The findings last year showed that an outer layer of the star, called the photosphere, had begun unevenly accelerating outward right before Betelgeuse began to dim.
    Jennifer Ouellette, Wired, 18 June 2021
  • This instrument will measure magnetic and electric fields in the sun's atmosphere to help scientists better understand why the corona is so much hotter than the photosphere.
    Elizabeth Howell, Space.com, 25 Sep. 2018
  • This set of magnetometers will measure magnetic variation throughout the spacecraft's orbit, which rangers from out beyond Venus to a close distance of 9 solar radii, or only 3.85 million miles from the photosphere.
    Jay Bennett, Popular Mechanics, 9 Aug. 2018
  • Despite their great temperatures, dwarf stars can and do harbor water molecules in their own atmospheres – their photospheres.
    Matt Hrodey, Discover Magazine, 15 June 2023
  • That friendly yellow photosphere boils like oatmeal and is pocked with dark magnetic storms (the infamous sunspots) that crackle, whirl and lash space with showers of electrical particles and radiation.
    New York Times, 28 May 2021
  • In addition, there’s a tenuous, very hot plasma separated from the photosphere: the Sun’s corona, which is hundreds of thousands of kelvin, and the Sun’s chaotic, irregular magnetic field frequently connects the two.
    Ethan Siegel, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2021
  • The outer regions from the photosphere up (the chromosphere and corona) are actually very thin, with pressures generally 1% or less of Earth’s surface atmospheric pressure.
    Veronique Greenwood, Discover Magazine, 22 Feb. 2012

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'photosphere.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Last Updated: