The peak of the magnetic activity of the Sun has been reached a couple of years ago, so large sunspot were not expected to develop by now, however the ones that appeared on early January are really huge, actually the largest in years: the central group, labelled as
AR1944, spans for over 200,000 km, while the main dark nucleus standing right in the centre of the sun disc is some 40,000 km accross, that is more than 3 times the size of Earth !...
With the proper filters or specialized eclipse glasses this particular dark spot was even easy to glimpse without any optical aid, making it the first naked eye feature visible on the surface of the Sun since the transit of Venus on June 2012...
Photos: Cristian Valenzuela / Observatorio del Pangue - January 7th, 2014
Camera: Nikon D3100 at prime focus of Orion 80mm refractor with white light filter
