LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Chances are you'll probably be slathering on some sun screen and turning on the air-conditioner this summer a lot. While it does get hot here on Earth to us, a CNN viewer has a question about how high the mercury rises on the sun itself.</s>ANNOUNCER: A CNN viewer wants to know: How hot is the sun?</s>ANN KELLAN, CNN SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT: Actually, it has various temperatures. On the surface of the sun, it's about 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The atmosphere is 100 times hotter. And scientists are still trying to figure out why. The core of the sun is even hotter: 22.5 million degrees Fahrenheit. That's over 11,000 times hotter than lava from a volcano. Scientists say nuclear fusion is to blame. And that's when hydrogen atoms collide to form a bigger atom. And those collisions create intense heat. Since we're 93 million miles away from the sun, it's difficult to take the sun's temperature. One method scientists are using is to analyze the different colors of the sun. They can recreate those colors in a lab. And the colors equal the amount of energy. By understanding how much energy, they can understand the temperature.
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