About a week ago, I was watching a tropical sunset wearing sunglasses and I thought I clearly saw a black speck on the surface of the sun. I know, I shouldn’t have been looking at the sun that closely. I thought it might have been some defect of my eye, but I asked someone else who said she saw it too.
The date and time was January 14th, about 23:30 UTC (local time 16:30), at a latitude of about 10 degrees north.
Online astronomical calculators tell me that no planets should have been visible at that time. Are sunspots visible?
The black speck was sunspot 720, which was indeed visible to the unaided eye. Activity associated with the spot was responsible for the auroral activity, and proton storm of the past few days. It’s no longer visible as it moved around the western limb of the sun on January 21: space weather
