India, April 24 -- The Government of India issued the following news release:
A new study has accurately estimated the abundance of Helium in our Sun for the first time. This could be a major step in assessing the opacity of the Sun's photosphere.
Astronomers have traditionally assumed the abundance of Helium in the photosphere of Sun-like stars to be one tenth of that of Hydrogen by extrapolating from hotter stars, or from the outer atmosphere of the Sun (solar corona, solar wind), or from seismology studies of the interior of the Sun. None of these methods are based on direct observations of the photosphere due to the absence of Helium spectral lines.
An accurate and reliable measurement of the abundance of the element Helium in the ph...