Sunday, September 18, 2011

What you see here are two photos of massive sunspot 1289, taken on September 17 by Spaniard Jesus Carmona de Argila.  Jesus used two different filters to accent the spot, with the one on the left taken with an "H alpha" filter tuned to the glow of the seething hydrogen. One can see the enormous magnetic filament trailing the spot's black core using this technique, which would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye..  On the right, the photo is filtered for natural light, which allows us to see the surface of the sun as we could with our own eyes if the sun were not so darned bright.  Currently spot 1289 is on its way over the sun's horizon due to the sun's rotation, and will soon disappear from view.

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