Spotless Sun (IMAGE)

Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian

Spotless Sun

Caption

This visible-light photograph, taken in 2008 by NASA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft, shows the sun's face free of sunspots. The sun experienced 780 spotless days during the unusually long solar minimum that just ended. New computer simulations imply that the sun's long quiet spell resulted from changing flows of hot plasma within it.

Credit

NASA/SOHO

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