SUN - Solar Phenomena LESSON

Solar Phenomena

The Sun's most obvious features are sunspots. Astronomers have been charting and observing sunspots since Galileo and his use of the telescope. In the image to the left, you can see observations done by Christopher Scheiner in 1612.
As you learned in the previous lesson, these are regions of the photosphere that appear dark because they are cooler than the rest of the Sun's lower atmosphere. Most of the time, sunspots come in clusters called sunspot groups. Due to our sense's limitation and limitations to technology, sunspots appear black. However, they are really red and orange. They only appear black due to the bright light around them.
To help you learn more about sunspots, you will research data on sunspots and graph/map the data to see trends in cycles. You will find the handout in your Sun module for the Sunspot cycle lab activity. Below you will find some helpful websites to get you started with your data research. Be sure to submit your lab report when you are done.

Websites for research are:

Aurora video Links to an external site.

Sunspot data website Links to an external site.

Daily sunspot locations website Links to an external site.

Auroras are a natural light display seen in high latitude regions on Earth such as the Arctic and Antarctic. Auroras occur when the magnetosphere is disturbed by solar wind from the Sun. The charged particles in the solar wind and magnetospheric plasma precipitate into the upper atmosphere where their energy is lost. This results in an emission of a complexity of light in various colors.

 

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