A Giant Appears

Tremendous Sunspot

On October 17th enormous sunspot group 2192 rotated into view around the Sun's eastern limb. If not the biggest sunspot of recent years, it certainly ranks close to the largest. I was lucky to have clear skies on October 17th to see the spot emerge. Here's what it looked like as it first became visible near the limb.

The spot doesn't look obviously impressive in the side view above because the entire extent of its structure can't be seen. Four days later, on October 21st, I obtained the following image when the spot was displayed more face-on toward Earth.

I've superimposed a picture of Earth within the large umbra in the next image to show how gigantic the spot is compared to Earth!

Sunspot group 2192 has been very active emitting several strong flares recorded by orbiting solar observatories. While gathering images for a time-lapse movie on the 17th I watched a jet of gas explode and shoot out into space.

The picture above is one still frame from a movie showing about 67 minutes of activity around the sunspot. It will take many hours to construct the movie which I will display in a future post. The next picture below, a combination of 8 individual images, shows the emerging sunspot along with several nice prominences spaced along the eastern limb.

Notice the transition from prominence to filament on the top left above. The transition shows a more three-dimensional appearance in the next closer view.

Relatively modest sunspot 2187 and two dark filaments were also present near center on the solar disc.

There were also some nice prominences on the Sun's western limb:

October 17th was a very productive observing day. I captured 100 video clips before the seeing deteriorated. Looks like 67 of these clips will make a nice time-lapse movie showing churning sunspot 2192. I hope to have the movie ready soon.