Editing Sol (section)

===Photosphere===
The effective temperature, or black body temperature, of the Sun (5777 K) is the temperature a black body of the same size must have to yield the same total emissive power.

The visible surface of the Sun, the photosphere, is the layer below which the Sun becomes opacity (optics)opaque to visible light. Above the photosphere visible sunlight is free to propagate into space, and its energy escapes the Sun entirely. 
The change in opacity is due to the decreasing amount of H<sup>-</sup> ions, which absorb visible light easily. Conversely, the visible light we see is produced as electrons react with hydrogen atoms to produce H<sup>-</sup> ions. The photosphere is actually tens to hundreds of kilometers thick, being slightly less opaque than air on Earth. Because the upper part of the photosphere is cooler than the lower part, an image of the Sun appears brighter in the center than on the edge or ''limb'' of the solar disk, in a phenomenon known as limb darkening. Sunlight has approximately a black-body spectrum that indicates its temperature is about 6,000 kelvin, interspersed with atomic absorption lines from the tenuous layers above the photosphere. The photosphere has a particle density of about 1% of the particle density of Earth's atmosphere at sea level.

During early studies of the optical spectrum of the photosphere, some absorption lines were found that did not correspond to any chemical elements then known on Earth. In 1868, Norman Lockyer hypothesized that these absorption lines were because of a new element which he dubbed "helium", after the Greek Sun god Helios. It was not until 25 years later that helium was isolated on Earth.