# What is the mass distribution within the sun?

Jupiter is roughly 1/1000 the total mass of the sun. To get some idea of what effect Jupiter's gravity may have on the sun I'd like to know the approximate mass distribution of the sun. (i.e) the approximate mass of the core, the radiative zone, the convective zone and of the photosphere?

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you need to edit your question, you must mean that jupiter (not the sun) is 1/1000 . There is an "edit" link under your question –  anna v Dec 29 '12 at 8:54
The sun's mass is roughly 1000 times of 1/1000 the total mass of the sun :) –  Inquisitive Dec 29 '12 at 9:06
Guys, you know you can edit questions yourselves, right? –  Nathaniel Dec 29 '12 at 10:08
Sorry @CrazyBuddy, I meant my comment to be read in a light-hearted fashion. –  Nathaniel Dec 29 '12 at 10:17
@CrazyBuddy don't worry, everything's cool :) –  Nathaniel Dec 29 '12 at 10:28

To get some idea of what effect Jupiter's gravity may have on the sun I'd like to know the approximate mass distribution of the sun. (i.e) the approximate mass of the core, the radiative zone, the convective zone and of the photosphere?

All these are answered in the wikipedia article on the sun.

This Nasa link has a recent study of the shape of the sun.

Jupiter's effect on the Sun

Has also been answered except it is hard to find links, since googling gets flooded with astrology links and dubious links to barycenter models which are not acceptable. You can find some order of magnitude calculations here. This is an estimate of the combined planetary tidal forces:

We can make a rough estimation of the magnitude of the effect of the planetary induced tidal forces. The calculated magnitude of the tidal force is of order F ~ 10^-10 N/kg. The acceleration caused by this force is a = F/r where the density r in the surface layer of the Sun is ~ 10^-5 gr/cm3 = 10^-2 kg/m3. During the time when the flux is carried poleward (of order 10^8sec), this acceleration can change the speed of the surface meridional circulation with a few m/s, which corresponds to the observed variations in Vsurf.

Unfortunately they have no scale on fig6 because they are intent in finding correlations with sunspots, but I believe that the scale should be milimeters.

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NASA give an empirical formula for the density of the Sun:

$$\rho(x) = 519x^4 - 1630x^3 + 1844x^2 - 889x + 155$$

This gives the density in g/cm$^3$, and $x$ is the depth in solar radii i.e. $x = 0$ at the centre and $x = 1$ at the surface.

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