There’s a monster sunspot making its way across the face of the Sun, and it’s captured the attention of several astrophotographers. This first image is from Shahrin Ahmad, who created a sequence of images as the sunspot moved to face towards Earth from the southeastern limb. He used a Skywatcher 120ED at F/15 (2X barlow) with a Baader Solar Filter and a IMG132E camera for his images.
AR1520 stretches more than 127,000 km (10 Earth diameters) from end to end, and the magnetic field of this enormous sunspot harbors energy for strong solar flares. NOAA forecasters estimate an 80% chance of M-flares and a 25% chance of X-flares during the next few days, according to Spaceweather.com.
The magnetic field of this enormous sunspot is tangled, and harbors energy for strong solar flares. Look for possible Aurora activity, and who knows... maybe even a cataclysmic event in the wake of a monster flare!
7/12/2012
7/12/2012
That's incredible! Especially reading about how big it is compared to Earth!
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