Sunspots (A pencil drawing)


During late October 2003, the Sun became unseasonably active, producing an abundance of sunspots. One or two of these active areas were ultra-massive in scale. To give you some impression of scale, the smallest dots you see in the drawing are about the size of the Earth. These turbulent areas were observed by ground- and satellite-based instruments to emit collossal bursts of material in the Earth's direction. Called Solar Mass Ejections (SMEs), the outbursts caused widespread interference with radio communications as well as creating spectacular Aurora, though I cannot admit to seeing anything myself.

Being an amateur astronomer I have a telescope, which I used to create this image. It's a pencil drawing of the main sunspot cluster. It was observed around 1500 hrs GMT on 29 October 2003 from England.

Please note that observing the Sun requires specialised equipment. My own telescope (a 10" Meade LX200) was fitted with a Baader solar filter on the objective. The magnification used was around 100x.

Do not look at the sun directly by eye and NEVER use ordinary binoculars or a telescope. YOU WILL SUFFER INSTANTANEOUS AND PERMANENT EYE DAMAGE .

Sunspots and Aurora

If you're interested in what's happening on the Sun right now, visit The Space Weather Website. You'll get all the info you need about possible auroral fireworks. Readers in the UK may care to pop over to AuroraWatch where the local geomagnetic activity is available.

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