                        Astronomy Picture of the Day

    Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our
      fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation
                    written by a professional astronomer.

                                 2021 July 2

                     AR2835: Islands in the Photosphere
    Image Credit & Copyright: Michael Teoh, Heng Ee Observatory, Penang,
                                  Malaysia

   Explanation: Awash in a sea of incandescent plasma and anchored in
   strong magnetic fields, sunspots are planet-sized dark islands in the
   solar photosphere, the bright surface of the Sun. Found in solar active
   regions, sunspots look dark only because they are slightly cooler
   though, with temperatures of about 4,000 kelvins compared to 6,000
   kelvins for the surrounding solar surface. These sunspots lie in active
   region AR2835. The largest active region now crossing the Sun, AR2835
   is captured in this sharp telescopic close-up from July 1 in a field of
   view that spans about 150,000 kilometers or over ten Earth diameters.
   With powerful magnetic fields, solar active regions are often
   responsible for solar flares and coronal mass ejections, storms which
   affect space weather near planet Earth.

                     Tomorrow's picture: Got telescope?
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