Visible Sunspot, Right About Now?

I was driving to work this morning, about 7 AM, EST, and it was a right picturesque misty vista. The sun was rising up quite large over the horizon, very bright to your regular eye, but when the mist shaded the intensity, I could see very clearly a black spot on the sun. Of course, I don’t make a habit of staring at the sun, but the fog made it easy to do so. Not directly in the center, but a little to the upper left of center, there was a black spot. It was visible through a twenty minute drive, through different positions in the road, so, for me, that ruled out any simple tricks of birds flying or eye weirdness. It was in the same position throughout my drive.

There’s a good planetarium and University astronomy department here, and I’m going to ask them tommorow, but since there’s such a plethora of astute individuals here, thought I’d ask. I’ve never seen a visible to the unaided eye sunspot before. I’d imagine that was a storm of great magnitude. Can anyone shed some light on this?

The sun should look like this right now. If you tilt this image clockwise by 45 degrees or so, it should match the orientation you would have seen at sunset. Does it look familiar to you? There is a sunspot near the center of the solar disk, but it doesn’t look particularly big and dark, and I wouldn’t have expected it to be a naked-eye sunspot. Still, I’m hard pressed to find any other explanation for what you saw.

Thanks much, scr4. The spot was centrally oriented. Basically smack dab in the center, but this was such an odd thing to be able (through a dense mist) to see it un-aided that I was being pretty particular in my observation without swerving off the road; I had to get to work. Wish not, or I would have sat awhile and seen what happened. Are sunspots normally seen (again, through fog), unaided? It was an anomaly fer me.

It was about an hour an a half after sunrise, here. Now that I’m enamored with it, any info on this particular storm would be appreciated,

It’s actually the biggest sunspot in 9 years. Check it out.

http://www.spaceweather.com

Thanks Sequent, I stand corrected. And it looks rather impressive in X-ray and UV too, even though it’s been rather quiet (no big flares or magnetic storms yet).

Was it a little black spot? I think that’s Sting’s soul. Someone should go call him in from the rain and ask him if he still wants it. ‘Twould fetch a mighty nice price on E-Bay.

::well someone had to say it!::

I have heard this kind of thing messes up satellite and wave communication. It took me a bunch of calls before I got on-line. It is a local provider, so it could have been a lot of folk calling at that time, but who knows.

Sunspot activity is associated with communication problems, usually HF radio communications and less so telephone, though solar storms have been known case some major damage and even disrupt power grids. This sunspot, despite its size and potential for flares, has been really quiet so far (which is good, since its pointed right at us!)…

Hey, Sequent, thanks for the link. There it is, #9169, slightly up and above left center. I’m not a hallucinating yahoo after all. If it’s a foggy morning tomorrow, go take a look. Pretty amazing that ya can see it directly!

The first observation of sunspots predates the first use of telescopes for observing the Sun, so yes, it’s definitely not unheard of for them to be visible to the naked eye.

As to communications: It’s not actually sunspots that disrupt communications, it’s coronal mass ejections (CMEs). The two phenomena are related, and both peak on the eleven-year cycle, but not all sunspots have CMEs assosciated with them, and the size of the ejection is not necessarily related to the size of the spot, nor are they necessarily in the same place on the Sun. CMEs will be a strong possibility for this whole year, but that particular big spot isn’t something to worry about.

Speaking of which, I heard someone claim that the stereotypical sailors and pirates had one eye missing because they used it to observe the sun in order to measure their position. Just a UL, I presume, but anyone else heard it?

Anyway, yes, naked eye sunspots aren’t all that rare, but still not easy to see. You’re lucky to see (and notice!) it, elelle.

http://www.spaceweather.com/ says “the magnetic fields above the giant spot have a tangled beta-gamma-delta configuration that likely harbors energy for powerful X-class solar flares.” Strong stuff, and *it’s pointed at us now[/].

It’s quiet. Too quiet.

      • A safe, cheap way to view sunspots is to get one of those round “blind spot” stick-on mirrors, normally for your car’s rear-view mirror. [The big palm-sized ones work best and cost all of $2] You go outside on a clear day and standing in front of a shaded wall, tilt the mirror until it reflects a big circle of light on the wall. The reflected circle will have non-reflected spots in it - sunspots. To prove they are not just dirt spots on the mirror, rotate the mirror: the real reflections of sunspots will not rotate with the mirror, but any shadows caused by dirt spots will. Ta-Da! - MC
  1. SCR4, thanks for the image, but don’t forget the sun is rotating about an axis! So, just because the sunspot is not shown as centrally located doesn’t mean much.

  2. The news has just announced the finding of a very large sunspot, perhaps one of the largest recorded, I believe. However, I am uncertain of the timing between the OP’s sighting and the “birth” of this latest sunspot finding.

Does anyone know how long the sunspot might stay visible to the naked eye? I believe it was visible near the top center of the sun as viewed through the early morning clouds yesterday. It was hard to get a good look, though, since the clouds were moving fast.

From spaceweather.com:

“The largest sunspot in 9 years, AR 9169, continues to decay. It now covers an area equivalent to seven times the surface area of Earth – down from 13 Earth-areas when the sunspot first appeared nearly 2 weeks ago.”

So it’s getting smaller, thus harder to see, and it’s rotating around to the edge of the sun’s visible disk, so soon it will be gone. You might still be able to see it, but hurry.

The region has only produced one very slight (m-2) flare with an associated CME that was Earth-bound. But don’t expect the sky to fall–it was very faint.

But please, don’t stare at the sun directly (no, I’m not trying to insult your intelligence, just in case some one reads this who will try it). There are several methods for viewing sunspots that are safe and painless, and they are detailed on the above site.

That link always points to the latest solar image, not the image at the time of sighting by elelle. The sunspot was dead center when the OP was posted, and I fully agree that it was a real sunspot that she (he?) saw. Sorry for the confusion.

another good link/photo of last week’s sunspot…
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000925.html