Gianluca Valentini took the picture on Sept. 23rd from his backyard observatory in Rimini, Italy. "Finally!" he says. He's been waiting all year for a good sunspot to photograph, so sunspot 1026 was a welcome sight. His snapshot frames the sunspot's dark core surrounded by a maelstrom of hot, magnetized plasma. Yesterday, some of those magnetic fields became unstable and erupted to produce a C-class solar flare.
These days, a good sunspot is hard to find. Readers, if you have a solar telescope, now is the time to look.
more images: from Pete Lawrence of Selsey, West Sussex, UK; from Andy Yeung of Hong Kong; from John C McConnell of Maghaberry Northern Ireland.; from Trevor Little on the south coast of England; from Francisco A. Rodriguez of Cabreja Mountain Observatory, Canary Islands; from Richard Best of Sussex, England; from Fabio Mariuzza of Biauzzo, Italy; from Jörgen Blom of Stockholm, Sweden; from Pavol Rapavy of Observatory Rimavska Sobota, Slovakia
