Solar Activity On The Up
The current solar cycle (24) has been pretty boring, but a new sunspot — 1035 — is growing rapidly and now is seven times wider than Earth.
Solar astronomers are predicting it could grow to be the largest sunspot of the year. There's not been a lot of competition for the biggest sunspot, though: for 259 days (or 74%) of 2009, the sun has been spotless. But maybe the (solar) tide is turning.
There's been other action recently besides the new sunspot. A long-duration C4-class solar flare erupted this morning at 0120 UT from around the sunspot, which hurled a coronal mass ejection (CME) towards Earth.
Observers at high-latitude could see some aurora action when the CME arrives on or about Dec. 18th. Keep cheering; maybe the sun will come out of its doldrums.
Remember, don't look at the Sun directly to try and see the sunspot. NASA has a great site that gives real-time data and updated images of the Sun from SoHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) at http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/ or check out http://spaceweather.com/ , which also provides updates.
