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How much does the core of the sun wobble and does this affect light reaching the Earth?

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  • $\begingroup$ The core is way larger than one gas scale height, which is thought to set the maximum buoyant eddy size. So the core doesn't wobble around. $\endgroup$
    – AtmosphericPrisonEscape
    Dec 17, 2022 at 13:42
  • $\begingroup$ Does this mean that gas moving towards the core thins out exponentially the closer it gets to the core? $\endgroup$
    – user48394
    Dec 17, 2022 at 14:30
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    $\begingroup$ No, quite the opposite. Have a look at solar structure models (density and temperature as function of radius). As gravity dictates, the mean gas density can only go up as you approach the center of the star. Buyoant instability (which does not happen inside the sun, but at its surface. Higher mass stars have convective cores) will be only a small density perturbation on top of that mean density. The descending convective cells are denser than the mean. $\endgroup$
    – AtmosphericPrisonEscape
    Dec 17, 2022 at 14:38

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The core of the Sun is stable to convection - the energy transport is dominated by radiative diffusion. The core of the Sun is therefore not turbulent and not wobbling around.

However, the Sun itself does "wobble" because it has characteristic oscillation frequencies that are excited by convective motions in its outer parts. The amplitude of the oscillations are about 0.2 m/s and have a period of about 5 minutes (Kjeldsen et al. 2008). This equates to amplitudes of radial motion of around 60 m, or about 1 part in 10 million compared with the solar radius.

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