sunspots

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sunspots

Written by Samantha Tjen

Design and edit by Rebecca Sopacua
The Sun’s extremely hot surface is
where many highly explosive
reactions take place and is incredibly
the busiest place! It is made of a
gigantic mixture of electrically
charged gases, known as plasmas,
that fuel areas of intensive magnetic
forces. These areas are called
magnetic fields. The gases are
constantly in motion, which tangles,
crosses and reorganises the magnetic
fields, hosting a lot of activity on the
Sun's surface, called solar activity.
The solar activity also involves
emitting photons of light to our Earth’s
atmosphere. Moreover, the kinds of
solar activity that takes place in the
sun causes it to have temporary
phenomena such as sunspots and sun
flares, but what are they exactly?
 What are sunspots?

Sunspots are dark areas of the Sun. They appear dark as they are
relatively cooler than the rest of the areas around the Sun’s surface and
block the light and hold in the hot material from within, preventing them
from being transferred out of its surface due to its very strong magnetic
fields. The magnetic fields are the strongest in sunspots than in other
areas in the Sun and are about 2500 times stronger than that in Earth!
How amazing! Although those areas are cooler, they are still extremely
hot for about 6,500 degrees Fahrenheit!

Sunspots are being observed in an image of the

Sun’s photosphere. Although they may appear really
tiny, the largest sunspot is about over 10 times the
size of Earth! How crazy! Additionally, sunspots are
also known to be storms. Scientists hypothesize
that the number of spots on the sun cycles over time,
reaching a peak every 11 years or so. As they tend
to move from one place to the other, they cause
solar flares, which are sudden explosions of energy,
and hot gassy ejections from the sun's corona, which
is its outermost atmosphere.

By taking a closer look at the sunspots, they

have two different regions, which is the umbra,
the darkest region where most light is blocked
and heat is held in, and the penumbra, which is
a lighter region surrounding the umbra.
Other phenomena such as solar wind, according to NASA’s Marshall
Space Flight Center, consists of magnetized plasma flares, with several of
them caused by the sunspots that cause the solar flares. Solar wind is a
continuous stream of charged, subatomic particles emitted by the sun that
happens through hot gassy ejections namely CME or ‘coronal mass
ejections’. It emanates from the sun and influences galactic rays that may
in turn affect atmospheric phenomena on Earth, such as cloud cover.

Fun Fact: Sunspots are one of the phenomena that is responsible for the
Northern Lights, which also includes solar flares and solar wind. This is
mainly caused by the magnetosphere by solar wind. Sunspots give
‘coronal mass ejections’, which cause streams of charged particles to
rush towards Earth. These particles interact with the planet’s magnetic
field and create beautiful Aurora displays, which are natural bright dancing
lights in the sky. Aurelia borealis is one of the examples that is spectacular
for sightseeing as seen in the night sky.
Effects of Sunspots to our planet Earth
Form Northern and Southern Lights (aurora)
As mentioned above, sunspots are one of the temporary phenomena that
cause the formation of these. As sunspots cause solar flares, which
cause solar wind emitting CMEs, the subatomically charged particles get
past the magnetic field and strike at the atoms in Earth’s atmosphere,
which causes the electrons to move at a higher-energy state or excited
state. When the electrons go back to its original energy state, a photon of
light is given off. The process that took place creates an aurora.
Increase Temperature & Change Weather Patterns
An increase in sunspots will mean there are more active solar activities
that will take place in the sun. Since there are more active sunspots,
there will be more active solar flares resulting in more solar wind, ejecting
more energy from the stream of subatomically charged particles. Thus,
more energy and UV radiation coming from the Sun will be transferred to
the Earth’s atmosphere, which eventually causes a possible increase in
global temperature. An increase in warmness of the atmosphere leads to
more increased heat that reaches the Earth’s surface, which most likely
increases the chance of precipitation especially in the tropical region.

Disrupt Radio Reception

As ‘coronal mass ejections’ strike the
Earth’s atmosphere called
ionosphere, it results in temporary
disturbances of the planet’s
magnetic field, which are called
geomagnetic storms. These storms
could possibly affect power grids,
causing entire cities to experience a
blackout, impeding GPS navigation
and radio communications.
Furthermore, they could even disrupt
satellites changing its polarity in
orbit. In order to prevent this,
scientists changed the orientation of
satellites to protect from increased
solar radiation.
 What if there are no sunspots?
As the strength of magnetic fields
sunspots drops below a certain level, the
spots will vanish eventually. However,
what if there are no more existing
sunspots? Scientists had hypothesised
the possibility of Earth having a cooler
climate, but not enough evidence is given
to confirm whether it is true or not that
sunspots are the actual cause for it.

Although we might not know exactly yet, scientists are very curious to find
out once it happens. What we do know on the other hand is that it will lead
to producing fewer solar storms during a prolonged quiet period, which
would be good news for satellite operators, astronauts, and Earthbound
utility companies preventing from triggering blackouts.

In the past, there are some pieces of evidence that may prove scientists'
hypothesis to be correct. One of them is the so-called Maunder Minimum,
a 70-year period that began around 1645, when sunspots vanished
virtually from the sun's surface. The declining event occurred at the same
time during a climate period known as the Little Ice Age, when
temperatures fell significantly in various locations around the globe and
different times during the time span.

History of Sunspots (400 years of

observation) & Sunspots Now
According to research, sunspots have been
more common in the past seven decades
than at any time in the last 8,000 years.
However, sunspots have been firstly
observed ever since the early 17th century,
by Galileo Galilei, an Italian astronomer,
Christoph Scheiner and contemporaries from
around 1609. Sunspots are then being
observed later on to be in what is known
now as the solar cycle (a period of 11 years
of solar maximum and minimum), which was
discovered by Samuel Heinrich Schwabe in
1843, who was a German astronomer. The
graph in Fig 11 simply shows the fluctuations
from minimum to maximum per 11 years.

Other than the Maunder Minimum, the

other major events are such as Dalton
Minimum and Modern Maximum. The
Maunder Minimum aforementioned is Mini
Ice Age, that lasted for 70 years which
was 5 solar cycles of 11 years from the
year 1645 to 1715. The second event with
low sunspot activity was the Dalton
Minimum which was 3 solar cycles of 11
years from 1790 to 1830. The Modern
Maximum refers to the period with high
solar activity beginning with Cycle 15 in
1914 until Cycle 23 in 2000. Cycle 24 is
happening now, and it appears that solar
activity is declining.
 REFERENCE LIST
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunspot

2. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/sun-spots-and-climate-change/

3. https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/solar-activity/en/

4. https://www.livescience.com/54652-plasma.html

5. https://www.theaurorazone.com/about-the-aurora/are-the-northern-lights-going-to-disappear

6. https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/solar-wind-info.htm

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora

8. https://reason.com/2009/08/27/sunspots-do-really-affect-weat/

9. https://earthsky.org/earth/what-causes-the-aurora-borealis-or-northern-lights

10. https://www.weather.gov/fsd/sunspots

11. http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/sunspots.html

12. https://phys.org/news/2016-03-powerful-geomagnetic-storms-solar.html

13. https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0614/A-sun-with-no-sun-spots-What-that-could-mean-for-Ea
rth-and-its-climate

14. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle

15. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Schwabe

16. https://www.space.com/484-sunspot-activity-8-000-year-high.html

17. https://www.windows2universe.org/sun/activity/sunspot_history.html

18. https://www.livescience.com/51597-maunder-minimum-mini-ice-age.html

19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maunder_Minimum

20. https://www.britannica.com/science/Dalton-minimum

21. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Minimum
 FIGURE REFERENCE LIST:
1. https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/solar-activity/en/solar-activity2.en.jpg

2. https://www.space.com/14736-sunspots-sun-spots-explained.html

3. https://www.spaceweatherlive.com/en/help/what-are-sunspots

4. https://www.observatoiresolaire.eu/astronomy-blog/sunspots-and-evershed-flows

5. https://science.howstuffworks.com/dictionary/astronomy-terms/solar-wind-info.htm

6. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Cloud_cover_over_France.jpg

7. https://travel.usnews.com/gallery/the-13-best-places-to-see-the-northern-lights

8. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ionospheric_absorption_(en).svg

9. https://phys.org/news/2016-03-powerful-geomagnetic-storms-solar.html

10. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/science/space/03sun.html

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sunspot_Numbers.png

12. https://id.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Samuel_Heinrich_Schwabe.jpg