These are pictures of sunspots. The picture on the left shows the whole Sun. There are two groups of sunspots on the Sun. The picture on the right is a close-up look at a sunspot.
Click on image for full size
Images courtesy SOHO (NASA & ESA) and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Sunspots
Sunspots are dark spots on the Sun. They may look small, but they are actually as big as a planet like Earth or Mars!
Sunspots are "dark" because
they are colder than the areas around them. Of course, they are not really cold like we think of cold! A large sunspot might have a
temperature of about 3,700° C or 6,700° F!
Areas around sunspots called active
regions on the Sun can lead to
solar flares and Coronal
Mass Ejections (CMEs for short). The solar
activity of flares and CMEs are called "solar
storms".
Sunspots can last for
weeks or even months. The number of spots
on the face of the Sun is not always the same, but goes up and down in a cycle. Over time, astronomers have used different instruments to look at how many sunspots are on the Sun, but remember that you should NEVER LOOK directly at the Sun!
Other stars have spots too. They are called "starspots".
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