Ann Blanchard wrote, Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Sunspot
I wanted to thank Kurt for giving the heads up about the sunspot. We looked at it yesterday around 6 p.m. . . . . In an unscientific mode, we all decided the pattern inside the spot looked suspiciously like at duck face grinning at us. How long do sunspots typically stay visible?
Your are welcome. I can see a little Daffy Duck in Pete Lawrence's image. (Lawrence is a British amateur with legendary astrophotography skills). http://spaceweather.com/swpod2007/01may07/Pete-Lawrence-2007-04-30_13-15-26_... http://spaceweather.com/ Per Chuck the solar period of rotation at the equator is 25 days - 1/2 is about 12 days. Usually you get a frame of about a week of good seeing. Here's an mpg movie of a large sunspot crossing the entire solar disk. You've probably got another five days left on sunspot 953. http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/gongmag4.mpg Per the Spaceweather.com site, sunspot 953 is shaping up as a potential X-flare class producing region. X-flares are the most powerful class of solar flares. The process works similar to a torus fusion reactor on Earth. Magnetic lines eminating from the white filament below the group of small brown sunspots trap solar gas above the surface of the Sun. The magnetically trapped gas accrues solar radiation and heats up from the Sun's surface temperature of about 5785 Kelvins, past the several million Kelvin temperature of the lower density corona, to 10s of millions of Kelvins. At those temperatures and gas densities, fusion ignition can occur. When these trapped gases undergo a fusion ignition, an X-class flare explodes with the force of equivalent to millions of hydrogen bombs. While images of these explosions are usually captured by the professionals with the SOHO satellite, I have heard of the actual flare explosion being seen by lucky amateurs armed with a Cornado PST. Here's an animated movie of sunspot similar to 953 made with a PST. http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2006/07dec06/Paquereau.gif - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net