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Discovery
How the Sun Gets Its Spots
To prevent solar damage to communication, navigation and other high tech systems, scientists are
determining the temperatures, composition and movement of materials inside the sun

High-resolution image of a sunspot taken at the Sacramento Peak Observatory in New

Mexico.
Credit and Larger Version

January 7, 2011

Sunspots are huge, dark, irregularly shaped--and yet, temporary--areas of intense magnetism on the sun that
expand and contract as they move.

"The diameters of sunspots are frequently on the order of 50,000 miles," said Frank Hill of the National Science
Foundation's (NSF) National Solar Observatory. "By contrast, the Earth's diameter at the equator is about 8,000
miles. The intense magnetism of sunspots usually reaches about 3,000 Gauss. [The more intense a body's magnetic
field is, the higher its Gauss number.] By contrast, refrigerator magnets average about 5 Gauss, the sun averages
about 1.0 Gauss, and the Earth averages about .50 Gauss."

Most of the sun's surface is covered by convection cells--roiling and boiling gases that bring heat up to the sun's
surface from the furnace in its core via convection. However, the intense magnetism of sunspots inhibits convection
and the associated heat transport to them. Therefore, their temperatures range from about 5,000 to 7,600 degrees
Fahrenheit (F), cooler than their surroundings, which hover around 10,000 degrees F.

It is only because of the "coolness" of sunspots that they appear black relative to their surroundings; if sunspots
could be separated from their surroundings, they would appear brighter than electric arcs.

Sunspots are cyclic. The number of sunspots increases and decreases over a period of approximately 11 years.
During solar maximums, when sunspot activity is high, areas near sunspot clusters experience particularly frequent
explosive activity, such as Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), massive blasts of highly charged particles and gases
hurled from the sun. CMEs can pose serious threats to people because they may damage satellites, increase the
radiation exposure of astronauts, disrupt communication and navigation systems, and knock out power grids and
other high-tech systems.

During solar minimums, when sunspot activity is low, CMEs occur less frequently than they do during maximums.
Nevertheless, solar minimums are not necessarily CME-free periods; large CMEs have occurred during solar
minimums.

"During the solar cycle, slow (20 to 30 mile per hour) flows of plasmas, known as jet streams, move from east to
west across the sun and slowly south from the solar north pole and slowly north from the south pole to the equator,"
Hill said.

Jet streams reach depths of about 65,000 miles below the sun's surface. "Sunspots and the jet stream are closely
associated with one another in terms of location and behavior," adds Hill. Sunspots initially appear during a solar
cycle when the center of the jet stream reaches a latitude of about 25 degrees. Also, sunspots are born above the jet
stream and reach deep inside the sun into the stream.

At the beginning of any given sunspot cycle, sunspots are usually born in clusters at high latitudes. But by the end
of the cycle, the birthplace of sunspots has--like the jet stream--usually moved to the equator.

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During the current sunspot cycle, the jet stream took a year and a half longer to reach a latitude of 25 degrees than
during the previous cycle. Likewise, the solar minimum between the previous and current cycle lasted 1.5 years
longer than the previous minimum. This observation suggests that "scientists might be able to use the jet stream to
predict the timing of sunspot cycles," Hill said. "Nevertheless, we don't know yet whether the jet stream causes
sunspots or sunspots cause the jet stream."

How can scientists possibly determine what's happening in the sun's depths from our vantage 93 million miles
away? They observe the speed of waves travelling through the sun, which manifest on the sun's surface as
observable up-and-down oscillations of gases. From those oscillations, scientists can deduce the temperatures,
composition and movement of materials inside the sun.

The technique of "seeing" inside the sun by observing its oscillations--known as helioseismology--is analogous to
techniques used in Earth seismology to "see" inside our planet by measuring how long it takes earthquake-
generated waves to travel through the interior and reach the Earth's surface.

Important institutions for helioseismology research are the National Science Foundation's Solar Observatory Network
and the Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG), a worldwide network of telescopes that continually observe the
sun. Read about the latest solar discoveries and see more stunning images at the Solar Observatory Network and
GONG websites.

-- Lily Whiteman, National Science Foundation, lwhitema@nsf.gov

This Behind the Scenes article was provided to LiveScience in partnership with the National Science Foundation.

Investigators
Frank Hill

Related Institutions/Organizations
AURA/National Optical Astronomy Observatories

Locations
Arizona
Hawaii
New Mexico
Australia
Canary Islands
Chile
India

Related Programs
National Solar Observatory

Related Awards
#1023439 National Solar Observatory Science Research Support
#0946422 Management, Operations, and Associated Projects for the National Solar Observatory

Total Grants
$1,574,698

Related Websites
LiveScience.com: Behind the Scenes: How the Sun Gets Its Spots: http://www.livescience.com/space/sunspots-
bts-101210.html
National Solar Observatory: http://www.nso.edu/
Global Oscillation Network Group: http://gong.nso.edu/

The National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230, USA
Tel: (703) 292-5111, FIRS: (800) 877-8339 | TDD: (800) 281-8749
Celebrating 60 Years of Discovery

Last Updated: January 7, 2011

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