Essay On Sunspots

Did you know that the sun’s core can reach about 15 million degrees Celsius? This bright star has many significant happenings. These interesting occurrences include sunspots, solar winds, coronal mass ejections, and solar flares. Sunspots are cool, dark-colored regions of the photosphere related to a shifting magnetic field inside the sun. However, sunspots are only dark in our perspective. A sunspot removed from the bright background of the Sun would glow brightly. Solar wind is the radiation of heat and a steady stream of charged particles. The wind blows about 450 kilometers a second throughout the solar system. Also, the Aurora Borealis occurs when highly charged particles from the sun's atmosphere move into the Earth's atmosphere via solar wind. Occasionally, particles will burst from the sun in a solar flare, which can disrupt satellite communications and knock out power on Earth. The flares are as powerful as millions of 100-megaton hydrogen bombs exploding at the same time! Coronal mass ejections are huge bubbles of gas braided with magnetic field lines that are ejected from the Sun over the course of several hours. Coronal mass ejections are known to be formed by explosive reconfigurations of solar magnetic fields through the process of magnetic reconnection, however its exact formation mechanism is not yet understood.

A factor of sunspots is that climate changes depend on where they are located, and how many there are on the sun. According to the current theory, sunspots occur in pairs of magnetic disruptions in the concentrated plasma near the Sun's surface. Magnetic force is 2,500 times stronger than Earth’s. Due to the high magnetic field, magnetic pressure increases while the surrounding atmospheric pressure decrease...

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... radio blackouts around the whole world and long-lasting radiation storms in the upper atmosphere. The M-Class flares are medium-sized; they generally cause brief radio blackouts that affect Earth's polar regions. Minor radiation storms sometimes follow an M-class flare. However, compared to X- and M-class events, C-class flares are small with few noticeable consequences here on Earth. Solar flares are different to 'coronal mass ejections' (CMEs), which were once thought to be initiated by solar flares. Coronal Mass Ejections give out geomagnetic storms. Solar flares, on the other hand, directly affect the ionosphere and radio communications at the Earth, and also release energetic particles into space. Therefore, to understand and predict 'space weather' and the effect of solar activity on the Earth, an understanding of both CMEs and flares is required.

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