AR2835: Islands in the Photosphere
Image Credit &
Copyright:
Michael
Teoh,
Heng Ee Observatory, Penang, Malaysia
Awash in a sea of
incandescent plasma
and anchored in strong
magnetic fields,
sunspots are planet-sized dark islands in
the solar photosphere,
the bright surface of the Sun.
Found in solar active regions, sunspots look
dark
only because they are slightly cooler though,
with temperatures of about 4,000
kelvins
compared to 6,000 kelvins for the surrounding solar surface.
These sunspots lie in active region AR2835.
The largest active region
now crossing the Sun,
AR2835 is captured in this sharp telescopic close-up from July 1
in a field of view that spans about 150,000 kilometers
or over ten Earth diameters.
With powerful magnetic fields,
solar active regions
are often responsible
for solar flares and coronal mass ejections, storms which affect
space weather
near
planet Earth.