An increase in surface activity is expected because our Sun is approaching solar maximum in 2025. However, last month our Sun sprouted more sunspots than in any month during the entire previous 11-year solar cycle – and even dating back to 2002. The featured picture is a composite of images taken every day from January to June by NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory. Showing a high abundance of sunspots, large individual spots can be tracked across the Sun’s disk, left to right, over about two weeks. As a solar cycle continues, sunspots typically appear closer to the equator. Sunspots are just one way that our Sun displays surface activity – another is flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) that expel particles out into the Solar System. Since these particles can affect astronauts and electronics, tracking surface disturbances is of more than aesthetic value. Conversely, solar activity can have very high aesthetic value – in the Earth’s atmosphere when they trigger aurora.
That largest one in the Southern hemisphere is visible—with proper protective gear—to the naked eye, designated No 3363.
It’s approximately six Earths across.
Really? I wasn’t aware of that, super cool.
Yes! I didn’t know it was possible. I was on a sunrise walk a few days ago and the sun was coming through a thick haze and I could make out an object in the way of the sun. I thought it might be an airplane or a satellite, but it never moved. Then I thought it might be the planet Mercury, but when I looked it up, it was in the wrong place. Then I found a NASA sunspot tracker, and there it was.