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A sunspot is made of plasma tied to tangled magnetic fields. These magnetic fields have energy but less mass density than the surrounding solar material so they are buoyant - they "float". Think about an ice cube in a pan of water... it floats to the top! The bigger the ice cube, the longer...

Karen H (Fox) We see in pictures sunspots near or along the suns equator, why never near the polar regions of the sun? thanks

Hi Jim, Solar Cycle 24 has really struggled to get started. The present solar minimum has been very deep and long when compared to the few previous solar minimum. Year 2008 was the ‘blankest’ year in terms of sunspots in more than 50 years. And the weak activity seems to be still continuing.. As a consequence...

As recently as last week, there were two new cycle sunspots. One of them however, numbered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) as Active Region (AR) 11006, lasted for only one day. You can expect old cycle sunspots to continue to appear for a while; it is perfectly normal for the...

The sun's spots are coming back. We know the new ones are from the new cycle because of the polarity of the magnetic field. Most sunspots are associated with magnetic loops which have in/out or out/in polarity, with the polarity different in the different hemispheres. For the new sunspot cycle, the...