The Sun (Kerbol) has an atmosphere.

[DMSP]

The last time I checked, it didn't.

But I had a "Dipper" probe. It came really low and then hit "The Atmosphere".

Pics soon.

[Red Iron Crown]

Atmo was added to the sun in 1.0. Not much you can do with it unless you turn off heat damage, your vessel will cook before ever reaching it.

[DMSP]

Atmo was added to the sun in 1.0. Not much you can do with it unless you turn off heat damage, your vessel will cook before ever reaching it.

Yeah, the probe was essentially a suicide probe. I forgot to turn off time-warp from the space center, switched to the probe, appeared in the atmosphere, and everything blew up

I had no idea about that atmosphere!

Can you get atmospheric data from it?

[Red Iron Crown]

Can you get atmospheric data from it?

I haven't tried but I would imagine so. It's just another atmosphere, if one that is hard to reach, incredibly hot, and high pressure.

[HafCoJoe]

Heh. I bet it would have some pretty fun flavor text.

[KerbMav]

Atmo was added to the sun in 1.0. Not much you can do with it unless you turn off heat damage, your vessel will cook before ever reaching it.

Always wanted to have that - and did not even notice it by myself or reading patch notes!

[eddiew]

I haven't tried but I would imagine so. It's just another atmosphere, if one that is hard to reach, incredibly hot, and high pressure.

Technically the outer layers of the sun should be really diffuse... and several thousand km thick

...now I need to turn off heating and go for broke!

[OhioBob]

There atmosphere is described in the Wiki...

Kerbol's visible surface, its photosphere, has a temperature of 5840 K. This temperature, along with the the star's yellow color, suggests that Kerbol is a Class G main-sequence star. Above the photosphere is a thin and hot atmosphere that is analogous to a chromosphere. The chromosphere extends to a height of 600 km and has at its base a pressure of 16 kPa. The temperature of the chromosphere decreses with increasing altitude until reaching a minimum of 4000 K at a height of 50 km. Above 50 km the temperature increases with increasing altitude. The maximum temperature of 10,000 K is reached at the atmosphere's extreme upper limit.

Edited October 12, 2015 by OhioBob

[gmpd2000]

There atmosphere is described in the Wiki...

I might use cheats to fly a plane in that atmosphere, brb, working on it.

[LordFerret]

The last ship I sent sunward didn't make it past its first pass. It got so hot, the solar panels melted off (goodbye Ion drive) and the entire ship started to glow (hot). I've thought about sending another - wondering if a sunward-facing end with a heat-shield umbrella would work.

[Fearless Son]

I did always want to make a (relatively) close-orbit probe to study Kerbol, with a heatshield so oversized the probe can fit behind it, and a big thermal control system deployed behind it, using the autopilot to keep it with the heatshield always pointed at the center of the orbit.

[Pixel of Life]

The last ship I sent sunward didn't make it past its first pass. It got so hot, the solar panels melted off (goodbye Ion drive) and the entire ship started to glow (hot). I've thought about sending another - wondering if a sunward-facing end with a heat-shield umbrella would work.

Something like Icarus 2 from "Sunshine"? Hell yes.

KSP really needs solar shields

[DMSP]

Alright, in the next few hours, we will know...

What Kerbol's Atmo is like...

[Whovian]

The last ship I sent sunward didn't make it past its first pass. It got so hot, the solar panels melted off (goodbye Ion drive) and the entire ship started to glow (hot). I've thought about sending another - wondering if a sunward-facing end with a heat-shield umbrella would work.

http://i.imgur.com/AV6sCz7.png

Someone tried that a while ago ... I think the thread was titled something like "project Icarus."

It turns out that the best way to get close to the sun without overheating is hide behind a heat shield, drained of Ablator, and use radiators, also hidden behind said heat shield.

[LordCurlyton]

Would hiding behind a sufficiently large asteroid work?

[Gaarst]

Did anyone manage to actually touch Kerbol's atmosphere since whatever release introduced it ?

Without cheating of course

Anyway, going to give it a try someday.

[Temeter]

Would hiding behind a sufficiently large asteroid work?

Won't work, (afaik) KSPs heat shielding doesn't account for occlusion. Even a large asteroid should melt in no time anyway.

[LordFerret]

I gave it a try with heat shielding a short time ago, posted about it here. I made it as far as 142373k from the surface before my ship went poof.

[softweir]

Heh. I bet it would have some pretty fun flavor text.

"Hot. Hot. HothothothotHOTHOTHOT!..."

[Joonatan1998]

Even if you somehow survived the heat from the radiation, the atmospheric entry would be...

Technically with a large enough stack of heat shields and radiators it might be possible to get the science. (probably not?)

The requirements for atmospheric science at least used to be weird, being in the atmosphere isn't for some reason always enough.

[FreeThinker]

Yesterday I tried to reach the surface of the sun. According to my calculations, the solar flux should not have been higher than  steffan_constant * surface_temperature ^4 = 5.68e-8 * 5500^8 = 51.9E+6 but the measured flux goes much higher (x10) than that making it unreasonably hard to reach the atmosphere of the sun.

[raxo2222]

36 minutes ago, FreeThinker said:

Yesterday I tried to reach the surface of the sun. According to my calculations, the solar flux should not have been higher than  steffan_constant * surface_temperature ^4 = 5.68e-8 * 5500^8 = 51.9E+6 but the measured flux goes much higher (x10) than that making it unreasonably hard to reach the atmosphere of the sun.

I posted something like that that long ago.

It is infinity exactly on Kerbol's surface.

Basically it treats altitude from surface of sun as if it was distance from center of sun, as if sun was single point.

Somewhere below 5 - 10 sun radius things starts to deviate and at 1 solar radius flux is exactly like it should be on surface.

 

Edited June 4, 2018 by raxo2222

[FreeThinker]

1 hour ago, raxo2222 said:

I posted something like that that long ago.

It is infinity exactly on Kerbol's surface.

Basically it treats altitude from surface of sun as if it was distance from center of sun, as if sun was single point.

Somewhere below 5 - 10 sun radius things starts to deviate and at 1 solar radius flux is exactly like it should be on surface.

 

So below 1 solar radius, you are technically inside the Kerbols corona? The problem is that solar sails below 1 solar radius starts to experience an insane amount of thrust (and heat).

Edited June 4, 2018 by FreeThinker

[raxo2222]

2 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

So below 1 solar radius, you are technically inside the Kerbols corona? The problem is that solar sails below 1 solar radius starts to experience an insane amount of thrust (and heat).

Nope, technically below 1 solar radius is inside of sun.

 

I guess SQAD didn't except Spanish inquisatio- sun grazers, who would dive below 5 solar radius.

Edited June 4, 2018 by raxo2222

[OHara]

13 hours ago, FreeThinker said:

So below 1 solar radius, you are technically inside the Kerbols corona?

At 1 solar radius from the surface, you see the flux you would expect to see when on the surface.  Raxo's experiments are posted here

10 hours ago, raxo2222 said:

I guess SQUAD didn't expect..

Probably they wanted to allow us to do such things, but got confused between altitude above surface and radius from center, so I entered a bug report for this.