For your viewing pleasure: A sunspot on candid camera

Date posted: June 19, 2009
Written by: Anne Minard
Posted in: Science and Research | Space science

When the researcher sent the link to thise image for a Universe Today post, my jaw dropped. Absolutely incredible view of a sunspot, by researchers at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), in my new town of Boulder.

You can read more about it in the UT story, or get the full scoop at the NCAR website. Or simply enjoy it here, for as long as you dare!

©UCAR, image courtesy Matthias Rempel, NCAR

©UCAR, image courtesy Matthias Rempel, NCAR

More about the image: It’s the interface between a sunspot’s umbra (dark center) and penumbra (lighter outer region) shows a complex structure with narrow, almost horizontal (lighter to white) filaments embedded in a background having a more vertical (darker to black) magnetic field. Farther out, extended patches of horizontal field dominate.

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