Pamela Leonard, age 12, of Chesterfield, South Carolina, for her question:

What exactly is the chromosphere?

The word chromosphere means sphere of color    and its color is red, the bright vivid red of seething gases. The colorful chromosphere belongs to the sun and, on a much larger scale, it corresponds to the lower level of our gaseous atmosphere. It forms an immense shell about 10,000 miles deep around the entire surface of the sun. Its blazing red gases are mainly hydrogen and calcium. The surface below it is the photosphere    meaning the light giver. This is a region of seething action, where nuclear energy erupts from the internal fiery furnace.

The stormy photosphere keeps the chromosphere in a state of turmoil. Solar flares, triggered by surface sunspots, blaze up thousands of miles like cosmic fireworks. It is thought that some of this fiery heat is transferred upstairs to the outer layer of the sun's atmosphere. This layer is the pale, pearly tinted corona that reaches millions of miles out into space.