Stargazing: Sun’s show not over, just watch spots with caution

If you bought eclipse glasses to observe the partial solar eclipse on Thursday, you can still use them to observe a super-sized sunspot today.

Having come into visibility on Oct. 17, Active Region 12192 has advanced across the face of the sun over the last week.

Usually abbreviated to just AR 2192, this is an unusually large region. A good-sized sunspot will be about the size of the Earth, or about 1 percent of the width of the sun. But this mega-magnetic storm has produced a darkened area about the size of Jupiter.

Sunspots are darker than the surrounding photosphere, but are actually still hot and radiating. Sunspots are thought to be cooler than the surrounding areas because intense magnetic field concentrations block the convection which would bring more heat up from below.

Instead, a sunspot is thought to be a downdraft of material falling into the depths of the sun. Sound waves passing below the sun's photosphere were used to develop a three-dimensional map of the interior of the sun below sunspots. The rotating vortex below the sunspot concentrates the magnetic field. Like a hurricane feeds off heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, sunspots feed off the magnetic and heat energy of the sun.

These intense fields contain a great deal of energy, just as a compressed spring does. When the fields change and reconnect in a new configuration, energy is transferred to the plasma in that region. The result is a solar flare.

AR 2192 has already produced a series of seven M-class solar flares of increasing intensity. On Wednesday, the first X1-class flare blasted out.

Keep an eye on the sun with your safe observing techniques, but never with the naked eye. Even safer is to visit one of the many online sites providing images from solar observatories and satellites. Some of the best images can be seen on spaceweather.com. Check out SOHO, Stereo and aia.lmsal.com.

Bernie Badger is Project Coordinator at the Eastern Florida State College Planetarium in Cocoa. Send questions, suggestions, or comments to badgerb@easternflorida.edu.

At the planetarium

Fright Night is the fun Halloween laser show with favorite “monster hits” such as “Monster Mash,’’ “Dead Man’s Party” and “Frankenstein.’’ Get in on the fun starting at 9 p.m. both Friday and Saturday nights at the Eastern Florida State College Planetarium in Cocoa. The full schedule of shows for the Planetarium for the next week is as follows:

Tonight

7 p.m. Legends of the Sky: Perseus & Andromeda

8:15 p.m. The Living Sea (IMAX)

9 p.m. Fright Night

Saturday

7 p.m. Amazing Universe

8:15 p.m. Whales (IMAX)

9 p.m. Fright Night

Wednesday

2 p.m. Ring World

3:15 p.m. Solar Max (IMAX)

You may access the planetarium show schedule and descriptions using the online calendar atcalendarwiz.com/planetarium. You may call the box office at (321) 433-7373 to hear our show schedule and prices.