A spot almost 10 times larger than the Earth appeared on the Sun

A giant spot has appeared on the Sun. At the beginning of the week, when the sunspot called AR3590 turned towards the Earth, it grew by 25%. This made it the largest sunspot of the current 11-year solar cycle. The area of the spot is about 9.5 times the area of the Earth. 

SSPDaily tells about it.

Astrophotographer Peter Lewis, who tracked the growth of the sunspot, managed to record the changes.

At the same time, so far, the sunspot AR3590 has not made a single coronal mass ejection. The spot has generated three X-class flares at once, which are considered the most powerful and largest in the history of observations.

The largest sunspot of the 25th cycle is about 60% the size of another record-breaking spot that caused a devastating geomagnetic storm on Earth, now called the Carrington event.

Earlier, scientists reported that the Sun is on the verge of its most active phase: the solar maximum. This is evidenced by a picture taken by an astrophotographer.

The rare phenomenon occurred during a solar flare from a spot near the south pole of the Sun. A giant column of gas or plasma was ejected into space, rising 15 thousand kilometers above the surface of the star. After that, the plasma broke away from the surface and flew into space in the form of a coronal mass ejection (CME).

Scientists also noticed that mysterious loops appeared on the Sun after a very powerful flare.