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Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Monster Sunspot


Monster Sunspot

The biggest sunspot of the current solar cycle is turning toward Earth. This morning when astronomer Karzaman Ahmad of Malaysia's Langkawi Nagtional Observatory looked through the eyepiece of his solar telescope, he declared AR2192 a "monster" and snapped this picture:

 

This behemoth active region is 125,000 km wide, almost as big as the planet Jupiter. These dimensions make it an easy target for backyard solar telescopes--hence so many pictures in the realtime photo gallery.

A few days ago, AR2192 unleashed an X1-class solar flare. Since then the sunspot has almost doubled in size and developed an increasingly unstable 'beta-gamma-delta' magnetic field. It would seem to be just a matter of time before another strong explosion occurs. NOAA forecasters estimate at 60% chance of M-class flares and a 20% chance of X-flares on Oct. 21st.

From SpaceWeather.com

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