Photosphere

The material that reaches the top of the convection zone cools by giving of light. This region of the Sun is the first part of the Sun that is visible to us and we call it the photosphere. This is wear the light we see from the Sun originates. If we could look at the Sun directly (never stare at the Sun without the proper equipment) we would see the photosphere. Even though the layer is not solid we call this part of the Sun the surface and it is also were the solar atmosphere starts. Its temperature is around 5,800 Celsius or 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

Chromosphere

Above the photosphere is a layer of the atmosphere about 2,000 km thick called the chromosphere. The temperature increases as you move higher to about 20,000 degrees Celsius at the top of the chromosphere. The chromosphere is no longer white light like the photosphere but is mostly red in visible light. It can be seen as red flashes during a total solar eclipse.

Corona

The highest part of the solar atmosphere is called the corona. The corona starts around 10,000 km above the solar photosphere. Unlike the atmosphere of the Earth the atmosphere of the Sun continues to get hotter as you move away from the solar surface. The answer of why exactly this happens is one of the biggest questions of astronomy and solar physics of the 20th and 21st centuries. At 20,000-25,000 km away from the solar surface the corona has an average temperature of 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 million degrees Celsius. But the density is very low, about 1 billion times less dense than water.