Mighty Sunspot

[PeterStudz]

Just been viewing sunspots AR3576 in white light between clouds. What a beast! I can even make it out naked eye using eclipse glasses. 

If you get any clear patches this weekend definitely worth a go.

[Nik271]

I just had a good look at it during a few minutes of sunshine. Seeing is poor, just can do x50 but yes totally worth it. It's also very magnetically active so may send out a big flare towards us. 

[Mark at Beaufort]

Yes Peter a very large sunspot. I had a look about 2 hours ago - it would be interesting  how large it is. 

I looked at it with my 90mm frac and a 7-20 zoom and a Baader white light filter.

[Nik271]

Spaceweather.com says the region 3576 is  720MH which is about 140 square degrees on the Sun or 2100 million km^2.

 

I tried to picture it as  a square: sqrt of 21x10^8 is about 46 000km, so this is a square with side four times the diameter of Earth. Big!