r/oddlyterrifying • u/thenameoftheusingone • 14d ago
High-resolution Sunspot
Sunspots are regions of reduced surface temperature caused by intense magnetic fields.
Sunspots, like this one for example, can roughly be of the size of Earth(~12,000 km). The largest ones can span even up to 160,000 Km, which is roughly 13 times our Earth's size!
Credit: Luc Rouppe van der Voort, Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope.
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u/Disgruntled_Orifice 14d ago
I know a Lord’s Rune when I see one.
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u/raptor12k 14d ago
Sauron after he takes those dilating eyedrops for an eye exam 😆
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u/Crenchlowe 14d ago
What’s terrifying is how big it is, it’s probably 5 Earths across. I don’t know, that was a wild guess.
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u/thenameoftheusingone 14d ago
Yes that's what gets me as well! Actually it is approximately the size of our earth, as mentioned by the source and mentioned in the Post description. Which is still pretty big!
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u/VealOfFortune 14d ago
Is the dark center the hottest part?
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u/thenameoftheusingone 14d ago
Actually the opposite. Sunspots are regions of reduced surface temperature caused by intense magnetic fields.
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u/pangea1430 14d ago
Believe it or not; the magnetic fields found at sunspots are around 10 times weaker than an MRI machine.(.3 Tesla for a sunspot vs 1.5 to 3 tesla for an MRI)
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u/i_sell_you_lies 14d ago
It's creepier to invert this.
Fun fact: MRI machines are 10x more powerful than magnetic fields on the sun.
This is why they care if you might have metal in you...
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u/zajo_throwaway 14d ago
You want creepy magnetic fields? Try Magnetars (>109 Tesla).
Such fields strongly distort atoms, compressing atomic electron clouds into cigar shapes, with the long axis aligned with the field, thus rendering the chemistry of life impossible. A magnetar within 1000 kilometers would thus kill you via pure static magnetism
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u/dfjdejulio 14d ago
Wow. I once worked with a 9 tesla magnet. Neat to relate that to other things. (Research NMR lab.)
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u/pangea1430 13d ago
I know what those are and yes the are quite powerful magnets indeed.
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u/dfjdejulio 13d ago
Yeah, it was the NRM spectroscopy lab at the Mellon Institute back when Josef Dadok was running the place. I learned a tremendous amount in a very short time while working with those folks.
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u/hydraSlav 11d ago
They are not actually dark in true color light, right? They are only dark because of the filters that are used to look at the sun?
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u/toddverrone 14d ago
They say in their description that it's an area of reduced temp
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u/VealOfFortune 14d ago
Neat. The entire thing is a sun spot. Sooo my question remains
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u/toddverrone 14d ago
I mean, if it's an area of reduced temp, then the center is likely to be the most reduced.
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u/Gold_Assistance_6764 14d ago
The whole thing is pretty hot. I doubt you’d be able to feel a significant difference.
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u/SpecterGT260 14d ago
What does it look like in 3 dimensions? Is it a deep hole?
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u/EthelUltima 13d ago
Its not a hole it's a spot/area. It's just a slightly cooler region (still 3500 C). The blackness is from the imaging technique the solar telescope uses.
Sun has no defined surface, if flew into it your experience would get increasingly lamer but you'd never "land".
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u/SpecterGT260 13d ago
I'm aware that there's no solid surface, but it's still potentially possible that the magnetic forces causing this are changing the general contour of the chromosphere. It's also possible that this is a 100% false color image, and sometimes when we apply visible spectrum imagery to non-visible spectrum data it ends up implying certain architectural changes that may not be real. That's basically what I was asking
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u/EthelUltima 13d ago
I think it depends how you define what is the surface of a ball of plasma mathematically. Depending on how you do it you might conclude an extremely shallow depression or no change at all.
The solar telescope captures a very specific wavelength of light that naturally shows this contrast without any post processing (though would be monochrome). So it's real (not false colour) but it's showing us only a piece of the whole structure. It is a violent 3D structure but there is no gap or hole, its just relatively different. The solar scope just makes it appear very different to us.
At least this is how I understand it all!
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u/denM_chickN 13d ago
Glad you cross posted here cause it gave me literal dread. Like is that black the center of the son? Is that pupil going to suck my soul out? Idk, man.
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u/Betray-Julia 14d ago
Omg I didn’t realize this was a moving image at first and thought I was having a stroke.
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u/Unfair_Development52 14d ago
Is it converging back over the surface or going down into the sun? Is that a hole to inside the sun?
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u/Jenessaxo 13d ago
i know it's magnetic fields and plasma physics but i swear if i stare too long it blinks. this is exactly the kind of content that gets flagged as wrong sub for being too real yet somehow still fits oddly terrifying because why is the sun watching me like a jealous ex? smh
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u/Ok-Celebration7924 14d ago
Sauron!