The Sun Now | Compare to Active Sun |
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Image Credit: Courtesy of the National Solar Observatory/Kitt Peak, NOAO. | |
| What layer does the light come from? | |
About the images:The strength of magnetic fields in sunspots (~3000 Gauss) is comparable to that of a toy horshoe magnetic although they are about 1000 times the magnetic field at the surface of the Earth. Strong magnetic fields show up as bright or dark regions, depending on their polarity; weaker ones are less bright or dark. In this magnetogram taken at the National SolarObservatory at Kitt Peak, dark regions denote south (inward directed) polarity and bright ones denote north (outward directed) polarity. |
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What to look for:Sunspots often come in pairs with opposite polarity, with magnetic field coming out of one and going into the other. The leading spot has one polarity and the trailing spot the other polarity, this reverses in the southern hemisphere |
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Connect me to the SOHO image gallery and the SOHO Movie Theater
Connect me to the National Solar Observatory/Kitt Peak
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