A Monster Sunspot Comes Around for Seconds

[jakeXT]

The Sun’s getting feisty again, and looking at the picture above, you can see why.

That ridiculously huge cluster of sunspots is called Active Region 1967, and the size is staggering: The entire complex is easily 200,000 kilometers (125,000 miles) across. That one spot on the left is more than big enough to swallow the Earth without having it touch the sides.

This cluster is actually the same one I wrote about a month ago (then called AR1944); it’s actually survived long enough to go all the way around the Sun and come back into view. That’s an uncommon occurrence. Using images from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, I made a video that shows the Sun over the course of a week (with images taken every 15 minutes), first in visible light to show the spot, then in ultraviolet to show the magnetic activity of this monster.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2014/02/04/sunspot_ar1967_huge_sunspot_cluster_rotates_back_into_view.html

[Mnemosyne]

1. YouTube ad for solar panels popped up. lol nt

[truedelphi]

2. Duck and cover. And be sure to put on some molten lead as

SunScreen!