Sunspots
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Birth of an active region
Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE)
This movie spans 11 days, from July 27 to August 6, 2001. It was taken with the visible light channel of the Transition Region and Coronal Explorer (TRACE) spacecraft. The satellite observed the Sun from April 1998 and obtained its last science image on June 21, 2010.
The movie shows an active region developing in front of our eyes. On July 28 we can see two small sunspots that appear very close to the limb and decay in the following days. By July 30 the two sunspots have become small and fragmented. On August 1 only a few pores (sunspots without penumbra) remain. Finally some action starts happening on August 3, when new magnetic field emerges during the night and early morning. During the course of the day lots of new flux breaks through the surface, groups together and forms a big sunspot group which continues growing during the next days until the end of the movie. Note how the sunspot group has different activity centres (dark umbrae) that evolve continuously.
The active region that we see in this movie appeared from the east limb, crossed the solar disk and disappeared into the west limb. It spans tens of thousands of kilometers in any direction. Active regions are locations on the surface of the Sun where enormous amounts of magnetic flux concentrate. They appear dark when seen in visible light because those huge magnetic fields inhibit the normal convective flows that bring heat to the surface from the interior of the Sun.
Download the movie clicking HERE
Movie credit: TRACE (NASA, LMSAL)
Text credit: Ada Ortiz (ITA, University of Oslo)