A sunspot is a region on the sun's surface that is marked by intense magnetic activity that traps the sun’s core heat from traveling to the surface like a bottleneck, forming areas of cooler surface temperatures. The average sunspot is about 4500 degrees C, while the surroundings are about 6000 degrees C. Sunspots can last for weeks or more and can be as large as 80,000 km (the size of over 6 planet Earths). [SOHO / MDI]
Hinode's Solar Optical Telescope (SOT) provides crystal-clear images of various features on the sun's surface. This video shows the whirl of a newly developing sunspot colliding with an existing spot, which explodes into a major solar flare. The solar flare shown in this movie was captured on December 13, 2006. The flare produced high-energy protons that reached the Earth during the Space Shuttle flight STS-116. The flare is shown in 3 different wavelengths.
