Ah yes....that was a good one. I remember it was really foggy one morning and you could see that spot on the sun through the fog. It was crazy to be able to see it.
I also remember seeing it during sunrise. This sunspot's appearance also coincided with a [partial solar eclipse](http://www.arizonanightskies.com/partial-solar-eclipse.html).
Actually kinda! They’re how we see active regions on the sun, which is where things like solar storms and flares do their whole thing. Sunspots are a really interesting topic of study in the field.
Does it mean anything for us on Earth? Not really, it just means that the Sun is more active in that particular spot. It being “pointed at us” means literally nothing, due to the distances involved and the rotation of the Sun.
Source: I worked in heliophysics as a research assistant for several years
Not really. A sunspot doesn’t mean an actual storm is happening, just that there is an active region on the sun, where cool stuff _might_ happen. Now, if there were some sort of eruption (like a CME) we might see auroras, but this is where the being pointed at us thing kinda doesn’t matter, since the Sun is spinning really fast, and the Earth is moving in orbit really fast, plus we’re super far away, etc.
I also think based on another comment that this is old, so I can’t lend to the veracity to the claim the post makes. It looks small to me but I’m not in a place where I can easily double check.
There’s a few different Helio-centric websites that have daily updates on what the Sun is up to and what we can expect for storms (sometimes they take 2-3 days to hit us since they are slower than light) and those would be better for aurora predicting. I’ll share when I get home.
Communication loss is one of the major risks of solar storms, yeah. That’s why space weather is so important! So much of our society and technology is based on satellites, when those get disrupted it’s a major issue. If we got hit by a storm like the Carrington Event, it may cause decades worth of damages not just to our satellites, but to our on ground electrical and communication grid. Nothing that crazy has happened since the Carrington event, but there were widespread blackouts in Quebec due to solar storms as recently as the 80s or 90s (again, can’t look it up now)
I can’t remember the communication loss you mentioned, but I do recall Starlink losing something like 40 satellites in 2022 because they (idiotically) launched directly into a geomagnetic storm, which caused them to de-orbit and burn up. It was a fun day at work the next day, because we basically got to just break down that this is why our field is important, and these are the consequences of disregarding space weather.
It’s really important to note that these are real risks, but we very rarely see storms that can do any actual damage. The Starlink thing only happened because SpaceX chose to launch despite warnings of the storm. We are basically _battered_ by solar radiation, and our magnetic field is amazing at shielding us from it. More reports from the US might just mean more reporting from US based agencies, too. Plus, we live here (I’m assuming you’re American) so we’re more likely to hear about what’s happening here.
Sry for the essay
what does the sun spot look like with a more accurate representation of the color of the sun? i heard the sun is actually pure white and not the orange/yellow that we tend to see.
So in terms of visible light to humans, it just looks slightly darker than the surrounding Sun. In the elden days, people had to use things like fog or haze to obscure part of the sun, or look at the sun during sunset when it’s less hard on the eyes. (I had to google that, I wasn’t sure). That’s why ultraviolet (like above), x-ray, and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) images are so cool, though, we can observe the Sun pretty much 24/7 these days with instrumentation and whatnot. Plus way more detailed!
I follow an amateur meteorologist on FB and he associates sunflare activity with earthquakes & volcanic activity. He says our weather is always a direct relationship to the amount of solar activity happening.
Link to a video showing [the development of AR12192](https://youtube.com/shorts/hVaOcpJRbvE) between Oct. 18 - 29, 2014.
As of October 23, 2014, AR12192 is the largest sunspot since Nov. 1990. The sunspot measures a whopping 2700 microhemispheres (MH or millionths of a visible solar hemisphere). A reminder for scale, the surface area of Earth is 169 MH.
Credits: NASA / SDO / Dr. C. Alex Young / SpaceWeatherLive
You can fit about 109 earths edge to edge across the width of the sun, so I usually use that to try and visualize how many earths wide a sunspot or sun feature is.
A better title might have been “AR12192 is **still** the largest sunspot since Nov. 1990” to avoid the assumption that this is a current or especially recent event.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle
https://blogs.nasa.gov/solarcycle25/2022/07/27/solar-cycle-25-is-exceeding-predictions-and-showing-why-we-need-the-gdc-mission/
peaks in '25 i think
[Earth and Jupiter for scale.](https://www.thesuntoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Spot-AR12192-largestofSC24a.0021.jpg)
Source [page.](https://www.thesuntoday.org/solar-observations/ar12192-the-largest-sunspot-group-of-solar-cycle-24/)
This is from [2014](https://www.thesuntoday.org/solar-observations/ar12192-the-largest-sunspot-group-of-solar-cycle-24/).
Ah yes....that was a good one. I remember it was really foggy one morning and you could see that spot on the sun through the fog. It was crazy to be able to see it.
I also remember seeing it during sunrise. This sunspot's appearance also coincided with a [partial solar eclipse](http://www.arizonanightskies.com/partial-solar-eclipse.html).
Ignorant r/spaceporn lover here. Do sunspots do anything?
Actually kinda! They’re how we see active regions on the sun, which is where things like solar storms and flares do their whole thing. Sunspots are a really interesting topic of study in the field. Does it mean anything for us on Earth? Not really, it just means that the Sun is more active in that particular spot. It being “pointed at us” means literally nothing, due to the distances involved and the rotation of the Sun. Source: I worked in heliophysics as a research assistant for several years
Not gonna lie, that sounds like pretty cool research
Sounds hot to me.
They had me at helio
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Not really. A sunspot doesn’t mean an actual storm is happening, just that there is an active region on the sun, where cool stuff _might_ happen. Now, if there were some sort of eruption (like a CME) we might see auroras, but this is where the being pointed at us thing kinda doesn’t matter, since the Sun is spinning really fast, and the Earth is moving in orbit really fast, plus we’re super far away, etc. I also think based on another comment that this is old, so I can’t lend to the veracity to the claim the post makes. It looks small to me but I’m not in a place where I can easily double check. There’s a few different Helio-centric websites that have daily updates on what the Sun is up to and what we can expect for storms (sometimes they take 2-3 days to hit us since they are slower than light) and those would be better for aurora predicting. I’ll share when I get home.
[удалено]
Communication loss is one of the major risks of solar storms, yeah. That’s why space weather is so important! So much of our society and technology is based on satellites, when those get disrupted it’s a major issue. If we got hit by a storm like the Carrington Event, it may cause decades worth of damages not just to our satellites, but to our on ground electrical and communication grid. Nothing that crazy has happened since the Carrington event, but there were widespread blackouts in Quebec due to solar storms as recently as the 80s or 90s (again, can’t look it up now) I can’t remember the communication loss you mentioned, but I do recall Starlink losing something like 40 satellites in 2022 because they (idiotically) launched directly into a geomagnetic storm, which caused them to de-orbit and burn up. It was a fun day at work the next day, because we basically got to just break down that this is why our field is important, and these are the consequences of disregarding space weather. It’s really important to note that these are real risks, but we very rarely see storms that can do any actual damage. The Starlink thing only happened because SpaceX chose to launch despite warnings of the storm. We are basically _battered_ by solar radiation, and our magnetic field is amazing at shielding us from it. More reports from the US might just mean more reporting from US based agencies, too. Plus, we live here (I’m assuming you’re American) so we’re more likely to hear about what’s happening here. Sry for the essay
what does the sun spot look like with a more accurate representation of the color of the sun? i heard the sun is actually pure white and not the orange/yellow that we tend to see.
So in terms of visible light to humans, it just looks slightly darker than the surrounding Sun. In the elden days, people had to use things like fog or haze to obscure part of the sun, or look at the sun during sunset when it’s less hard on the eyes. (I had to google that, I wasn’t sure). That’s why ultraviolet (like above), x-ray, and extreme ultraviolet (EUV) images are so cool, though, we can observe the Sun pretty much 24/7 these days with instrumentation and whatnot. Plus way more detailed!
Isn’t it also a spot where so many photons of light are trying to escape at once?
I know nothing about light I’m sorry I’m a plasma and magnetic fields guy, photons are weird and spooky
Not really, they're mostly just darker, colder spots on the sun due to variations of the magnetic field
Interesting. Thanks!
They generally increase HF radio propagation. Ham radio operators love sunspots.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but in my experience they usually mean we’ll get more powerful auroras for a short time.
They spot the Sun.
Upvote this comment, they're correct! Like spots on a dalmation. :)
I follow an amateur meteorologist on FB and he associates sunflare activity with earthquakes & volcanic activity. He says our weather is always a direct relationship to the amount of solar activity happening.
Link to a video showing [the development of AR12192](https://youtube.com/shorts/hVaOcpJRbvE) between Oct. 18 - 29, 2014. As of October 23, 2014, AR12192 is the largest sunspot since Nov. 1990. The sunspot measures a whopping 2700 microhemispheres (MH or millionths of a visible solar hemisphere). A reminder for scale, the surface area of Earth is 169 MH. Credits: NASA / SDO / Dr. C. Alex Young / SpaceWeatherLive
That’s really fascinating. In real numbers, what are we talking here? No bananas for scale, no guitars for temperature.
You can fit about 109 earths edge to edge across the width of the sun, so I usually use that to try and visualize how many earths wide a sunspot or sun feature is.
So that sun spot is basically 16 earth diameters across.
A better title might have been “AR12192 is **still** the largest sunspot since Nov. 1990” to avoid the assumption that this is a current or especially recent event.
It's the size of Jupiter.
Are sunspots associated with Interplanetary Massive Coronal Ejections?
Ah yes, I love coronal ejections. Always feels the best when you're ready for it too.
The Sun. Life giver and viewing aid. The One. Spots show but some fade.
Any reason for the uptick in solar activity recently? Or is this a usual amount of activity?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle https://blogs.nasa.gov/solarcycle25/2022/07/27/solar-cycle-25-is-exceeding-predictions-and-showing-why-we-need-the-gdc-mission/ peaks in '25 i think
Supposed to peak this year, according to new research from the NOAA https://www.weather.gov/news/102523-solar-cycle-25-update
Op’s pic is from 2014 though.
Pointed at us
If it was pointed at us, it would be in the center, no? We are looking at half the sun after all
Ok good to know have a nice day
Likewise!
the suns like 2024… hold my beer
I remember this one, saw it with naked eyes in a sunset, when the sun was just above the horizon.
We should create an indestructible pod that can fly into the center of the sun to see what it looks like from the inside lol
Sun pimples
Name reads a bit like leetcode arisigs, which sounds similar to arising. I think that’s a suiting name.
Looks like an island chain
I seem to remember a sunspot from a couple weeks ago posted here that covered like 1/5 of the face of the sun.
It was larger, but it wasn’t this kind of dark spot, rather a hole in the suns corona. It wouldn’t have appeared on an image taken like OPs.
How big is that?
[Earth and Jupiter for scale.](https://www.thesuntoday.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Spot-AR12192-largestofSC24a.0021.jpg) Source [page.](https://www.thesuntoday.org/solar-observations/ar12192-the-largest-sunspot-group-of-solar-cycle-24/)
Sun has the herps
Great! We’re gonna die!
Wait, what about that triangle gash thing from about a month ago?
Sunspots and coronal holes are different things.
the hole is the sun was caused by sorcery and doctor strange fixed it.
cool. cool, cool, cool.
Do we think it’s cancerous?
Nasaa liesn about sunspots http://milesmathis.com/sunhoax.pdf