Sunspot Group 1429 and the Distant Sun
What's that on the
Sun?
Over the past two weeks, one of the most energetic sunspot regions of recent years crossed the face of the Sun.
Active Region 1429, visible above as the group of dark spots on the Sun's upper right, blasted out several
solar flares and
coronal mass ejections
since coming around the
edge of the Sun almost a month ago.
Fast moving particles from these
solar explosions have impacted
the Earth and been responsible for many colorful auroras seen over the past two weeks.
The picturesque foreground features trees and birds near
Merida,
Spain, where the above image was taken about a week ago.
Although AR 1429 has continued to rotate
to the right and gone around the limb of the Sun -- as seen from the Earth -- monitoring of the region will be continued by one of the
STEREO satellites, however, which is orbiting the
Sun well ahead of the Earth.