Photosphere

February 21, 2013

A Spot with Potential

A sunspot region with potential, AR11678! Yes pun intended. This solar active region (AR for short) has emerged suddenly from under the solar photosphere (the visible “surface”) packed with magnetic potential energy and the potential for some significant flaring. It […]
December 1, 2010

Seven-Day Sun

For seven days SDO’s HMI instrument watched as a small sunspot group morphed, merged and grew into two large sunspots (Nov. 13-19, 2010) as other sunspots begin to emerge as well. We selected an image about every 15 minutes (approximately […]