The giant sunspot AR3354, seven times wider than Earth, is visible to the naked eye as it crosses the sun, but observers must protect their eyes. Image: NASA/ SDO/ Bum-Suk Yeom
SPACE — A massive sunspot seven times as vast as Earth is currently visible to the naked eye. But sky watchers must remember to protect their eyes if they want to catch a glimpse of the feature before it disappears.
An extraordinary dark spot on the sun, which has been named AR3354, will disappear on Sunday, July 2, 2023, spinning out of Earth’s view. According to SpaceWeather.comsunspots just appeared on Monday, July 26, 2023, and have been growing rapidly since then.
On Twitter, solar physicist Keith Strong shared a stunning video of sunspots crossing the sun’s surface. Strong wrote: ‘The newly assigned sunspot area number, AR3354, has expanded rapidly in the last 24 hours. Two days ago, it didn’t even exist, now it has a speck bigger than Earth. If this pace of growth continues, we should start to see some big flares of it.’
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As Strong implied, as well as increasing in size, sunspots also increase in intensity. SpaceWeather.com added, AR3354 has developed a gamma magnetic field that can produce powerful solar flares. The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts a 40 percent chance of a medium-sized or M-class solar flare due to AR3354 on Wednesday, July 28, 2023.
Following a solar flare forecast, Strong photographed the M-class flare in stunning detail as it erupted from AR3354, also sharing the footage on his Twitter account. NOAA forecasters added there is also a 10 percent chance of the largest class of solar flare, flare X, on Wednesday.
The eruption can affect the Earth, because the sunspot is currently pointing towards our planet. According to the European Space Agency (ESA), M-class flares can result in brief radio blackouts that affect Earth’s polar regions and can trigger small radiation storms. Class X flares, on the other hand, are major events that can cause worldwide radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms in the upper atmosphere.
Sunspots are the result of strong magnetic field activity on the sun’s surface, known as the photosphere. This can cause not only flares but also coronal mass ejections (CMEs), large streams of stellar material. However, at the time of writing, the AR3354 has yet to launch a CME.
Despite its extraordinary size, this new sunspot is unlikely to have caused as much activity as the most intense solar storm ever recorded, called the Carrington Event.
On September 1, 1859, several sunspots, thought to be collectively about the width of Jupiter, exploded the CME causing a bright white flash. It lasted about five minutes and blinded amateur astronomer Richard Carrington some time after the incident.
Don’t follow Carrington’s lead and get your eyes damaged. If you intend to see large sunspots, you should wear sunglasses, eclipse glasses, or some other type of certified eye protection. And before using such fixtures, you should check them for streaks. Put on the glasses before looking into the sun and look away before you take them off, as even brief sun exposure can permanently damage your eyes. Source: Space.com
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2023-06-30 13:28:50
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