fr/spaceweather.com

BIG SUNSPOTS: After more than a week of quiet, solar activity is picking up. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory is monitoring two big sunspot groups now emerging over the sun’s eastern limb. Click on the image to view a 40-hour movie:

The leading sunspot group, AR1260, is crackling with C-class solar flares among a quartet of Earth-sized cores. Not far behind, sunspot AR1261 is larger and may harbor energy for flares of its own. At the moment, these two sunspot groups are too far off disk-center to affect Earth, but this will change in the days ahead. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments.