Sunspots and Solar Eclipse
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Michael Bolte (UCSC)
A New Moon
joined giant sunspot group AR 2192
to dim the bright solar disk
during Thursday's
much anticipated partial solar eclipse.
Visible
from much of North America, the Moon's broad silhouette
is captured in this extreme telephoto snapshot near
eclipse maximum from Santa Cruz, California.
About the size of Jupiter, the
remarkable AR 2192 itself
darkens a noticeable fraction
of the Sun, near center and below the curved lunar limb.
As the sunspot group slowly rotates
across the Sun and
out of view in the coming days its activity is difficult
to forecast.
But the timing of
solar
eclipses is easier to predict.
The next will be a total solar eclipse on
March 20, 2015.