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Individual sunspots or groups of sunspots may last anywhere from a few days to a few months, but eventually decay. Sunspots expand and contract as they move across the surface of the Sun, with diameters ranging from 16 km (10 mi) [3] to 160,000 km (100,000 mi). [4] Larger sunspots can be visible from Earth without the aid of a telescope. [5]
The images, obtained in March 2023 by the ESA's Solar Orbiter, represent what the agency says are the highest-resolution views of the sun's surface, known as the photosphere, to date.
Changes in carbon-14 concentration in the Earth's atmosphere, which serves as a long term proxy of solar activity.. This figure summarizes sunspot number observations. Since c. 1749, continuous monthly averages of sunspot activity have been available and are shown here as reported by the Solar Influences Data Analysis Center, World Data Center for the Sunspot Index, at the Royal Observatory of ...
These have also been used on century times scales but, in addition, instrumental data are increasingly available (mainly telescopic observations of sunspots and thermometer measurements of air temperature) and show that, for example, the temperature fluctuations do not match the solar activity variations and that the commonly-invoked ...
Sunspot AR3664 visible on the bottom right part of the Earth-facing side of the sun on May 9, 2024. (NASA/ Solar Dynamics Observatory) Millions of people who went out of their way to find eclipse ...
Sunspot activity has been measured using the Wolf number for about 300 years. This index (also known as the Zürich number) uses both the number of sunspots and the number of sunspot groups to compensate for measurement variations. A 2003 study found that sunspots had been more frequent since the 1940s than in the previous 1150 years. [30]
Strong concentrations of faculae appear during increased solar activity, with or without sunspots. Faculae and sunspots contribute noticeably to variations in the solar constant. The chromospheric counterpart of a facular region is called a plage. [1] [2] [3] [4]
As each cycle begins, sunspots appear at mid-latitudes, and then move closer and closer to the equator until a solar minimum is reached. This pattern is best visualized in the form of the so-called butterfly diagram. Images of the Sun are divided into latitudinal strips, and the monthly-averaged fractional surface of sunspots is calculated.