Sunspot

[Plane]

Big sunspot AR1726 rotated off the Earthside of the sun yesterday, surmounting the west limb of the solar disk as it headed for the sun's farside. With exquisite timing, amateur astronomer Harald Paleske of Langendorf, Germany, took the opportunity to photograph a sunspot, edge-on:To create this extraordinary composite image, he assembled several exposures from his 225mm Unigraph solar telescope into a single panorama spanning more than 150,000 km. It shows a maelstrom of magnetic turbulence and heaving plasma--a true solar storm.

The last time we saw it clearly, AR1726 had a delta-class magnetic field that harbored energy for powerful X-class solar flares.
http://spaceweather.com/

[sirs]