London: The Sun currently has some of its largest dark circles in several years. The magnitude can be gauged from the estimation that these dark circles can together cover an area almost 14 times the size of planet Earth.
Interestingly, scientists believe these dark circles could burst at any point of time.
Also called sunspots, these freckles are the visible part of active regions on the star which is at the centre of our solar system, and are cooler than other areas. They are formed due to intense magnetic field lines, which prevent heat from reaching the photosphere, the visible layer of the Sun where sunspots can be spotted.
The gigantic group of sunspots is 180,000 kilometres wide. At least five of the dark circles are larger than Earth, called the Blue Planet, with a diameter of 12,756 kilometres at the equator.
Termed sunspot complex 4294-96, it lies in the Sun’s southern hemisphere. It’s so gigantic that it can’t be fitted into a single frame, reported India Today.
Trinidad-based amateur astronomer Amrit Seecharan was quoted as saying by spaceweather.com that he had to stitch two solar photographs together to capture the entire complex.
NASA’s Perseverance rover spotted the sunspot complex, using its Mastcam-Z and Navigation (Navcam) cameras.
The Mars rover captured the gargantuan sunspot complex through a cloud of dust in the Red Planet’s Jezero Crater in late November.
In September, NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured an enormous coronal hole on the sun.
Sunspot complex 4294-96 is classified as beta-gamma-delta, the category used for sunspots with a high potential for solar flares, and being extremely complex and unstable.
On December 1 morning, the Sun emitted an X-2 class solar flare, the second-most powerful type. Some astrophysicists said sunspot complex 4294-96 was responsible for this flare, but it was a different one — sunspot 4295 – that was found to have caused the explosion.
The solar flare, which led to a radio blackout above Australia, is expected to cause a coronal mass ejection — a huge eruption of plasma and magnetic fields from the solar corona.
As the Sun has multiple sunspots now, chances of X-flares occurring are very high. Besides worldwide radio blackouts, X-flares can trigger long-lasting radiation storms in the upper atmosphere.
On the positive side, from X-flares can light up the northern sky in the form of breathtaking auroras.
