Sun ID: 11211

SDO Observes Fast-Growing Sunspot

Released on February 22, 2013

As magnetic fields on the sun rearrange and realign, dark spots known as sunspots can appear on its surface. Over the course of Feb. 19-20, 2013, scientists watched a giant sunspot form in under 48 hours. It has grown to over six Earth diameters across but its full extent is hard to judge since the spot lies on a sphere not a flat disk.

The spot quickly evolved into what's called a delta region, in which the lighter areas around the sunspot, the penumbra, exhibit magnetic fields that point in the opposite direction of those fields in the center, dark area. This is a fairly unstable configuration that scientists know can lead to eruptions of radiation on the sun called solar flares.

The bottom two black spots on the sun, known as sunspots, appeared quickly over the course of Feb. 19-20, 2013. These two sunspots are part of the same system and are over six Earths across. This image combines images from two instruments on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO): the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), which takes pictures in visible light that show sunspots and the Advanced Imaging Assembly (AIA), which took an image in the 304 angstrom wavelength showing the lower atmosphere of the sun, which is colorized in red.

Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/HMI/Goddard Space Flight Center

Wider version of image. The bottom two black spots on the sun, known as sunspots, appeared quickly over the course of Feb. 19-20, 2013. These two sunspots are part of the same system and are over six Earths across. This image combines images from two instruments on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO): the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), which takes pictures in visible light that show sunspots and the Advanced Imaging Assembly (AIA), which took an image in the 304 angstrom wavelength showing the lower atmosphere of the sun, which is colorized in red.

Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/HMI/Goddard Space Flight Center

Full Disk image at full SDO resolution. This image combines images from two instruments on NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO): the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), which takes pictures in visible light that show sunspots and the Advanced Imaging Assembly (AIA), which took an image in the 304 angstrom wavelength showing the lower atmosphere of the sun, which is colorized in red.

Credit: NASA/SDO/AIA/HMI/Goddard Space Flight Center

Full disk, full resolution image of sun the Helioseismic and Magnetic Imager (HMI), which takes pictures in visible light that show sunspots.

Credit: NASA/SDO/HMI/Goddard Space Flight Center

For More Information

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/fastgrowing-sunspot.html

Credits

Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Lead Animator
Scott Wiessinger (USRA): Producer
Karen Fox (ADNET Systems, Inc.): Writer

Please give credit for this item to:
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO

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Mission:
SDO

Data Used:

SDO

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

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SDO/HMI/Continuum also referred to as: SDO Continuum

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SDO/HMI/Magnetogram also referred to as: SDO Magnetogram

Data Compilation

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SDO/AIA/304 Filter also referred to as: AIA 304

JOINT SCIENCE OPERATIONS CENTER

http://jsoc.stanford.edu/

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SDO/AIA/171 Filter also referred to as: AIA 171

JOINT SCIENCE OPERATIONS CENTER

http://jsoc.stanford.edu/

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Note: While we identify the data sets used in these visualizations, we do not store any further details nor the data sets themselves on our site.

This item is part of this series:
Heliophysics Breaking News

Goddard TV Tape:
G2013-021 -- 2013 Heliophysics Breaking News

Keywords:
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Sun-earth Interactions
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Sun-earth Interactions >> Solar Activity >> Solar Ultraviolet
GCMD >> Earth Science >> Sun-earth Interactions >> Solar Activity >> Sunspots
SVS >> Space Weather
SVS >> SDO
SVS >> Solar Dynamics Observatory
SVS >> Heliophysics
SVS >> Corona
NASA Science >> Sun
SVS >> Visible Light Imaging
SVS >> Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging
SVS >> EUV Imaging

GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation: Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0