Solar Week - Ask a Question



Come here during Solar Week (next one: March 22-26, 2021) to interact. To post a question, click on your area of interest from the topics below, and then click on the "Ask New Question" button. Or EMAIL or tweet or plant in Answer Garden your question about the Sun or life as a scientist to us -- and watch for it to appear here.  You can also visit our FAQs (frequently asked questions). In between Solar Weeks in October and March, you can view all the archives here.

PrevPrev Go to previous topic
NextNext Go to next topic
Last Post 10/15/2012 10:15 AM by  KD Leka
What color are sunspots?
 2 Replies
Sort:
You are not authorized to post a reply.
Author Messages

Anonymous





Posts:


--
10/14/2012 9:24 PM
    are sunspots green, yellow, black ect....
    Tags: sunspots, temperature, surface, color, Color Mapping, False Color, color-coding

    Terry Kucera



    Basic Member


    Posts:328
    Basic Member


    --
    10/15/2012 6:33 AM

    Sunspots look dark, but really that is just that they are darker than the rest of the Sun which is _so_ bright even bright things look dark by comparison.

    Sunspots themselves are actually quite bright. They are cooler and thus a bit redder in color than the rest of the Sun's surface, but they still give off a wide range of colors so that on their own I think they would still look pretty white.

    best,

    Terry


    KD Leka



    Basic Member


    Posts:115
    Basic Member


    --
    10/15/2012 10:15 AM

    Hi; one thing you may see is that when solar scientists show pictures of the Sun, the pictures may be in different colors (for example, take a look at http://nsosp.nso.edu/dst or http://www.solarmonitor.org/index.php or http://sdowww.lmsal.com/suntoday/. We use different computer programs and different colors sometimes as 'shorthand' to easily convey some information about the data being shown, such as what kind of light is being used for the image. That sounds weird ("kinds of light?") but our eyes can't see some of the light that the instruments are designed to see (such as X-rays), so the color-coding in the images is pretty fake but useful to convey information. For example, the color-coding of an image like you can see at http://sdowww.lmsal.com/sdomedia/SunInTime/2012/10/15/l_211_193_171.jpg give some information about the temperature of the structures in the corona.

    That being said, Terry's answer is great - sunspots themselves just look dark because they're cooler than the nearby surface, but they are still very hot. Because they are slightly cooler (by only about 1500deg, which sounds like a lot, but compared to the 6000deg surface it's not too much!), they would appear a bit redder than the surroundings.

    Cheers, -KD

    You are not authorized to post a reply.


    Twitter Feed

    Scientist Leaderboard

    Name # of replies
    Multiverse skin is based on Greytness by Adammer