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Greenhouse Effect On a bright, cool day, most people notice the sun’s rays as feeling good on their skin. By nature, many of us even try to stay on the sunny side of the street while walking. The sun is 93 million miles away from earth and its energy travels to us in moving waves called radiation. The energy becomes heat, light and other energy too. Visible sunlight allows us to see the world around us, but there is invisible sunlight, too. These rays can’t be seen, but some can be felt as heat. They are called ultraviolet rays, and they are what changes the appearance of the skin, like wrinkles and even cancer. I discovered a blanket of gases known as the atmosphere surrounding our planet. It is what provides us with the air we breathe, and it protects us from the full blast of the sun’s radiation. Way up there in the part of the atmosphere called the stratosphere, a layer of gas called ozone, filters out most of the sun’s damaging ultraviolet rays. This happens about five miles to 25 miles above the surface of Earth (Bright 14-15). Only about one- millionth of our atmosphere is made up of ozone. But it has an important job.