NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) captured the sunspot flares over the course of five hours on Tuesday, October 26. Sunspots, which can be many times larger than Earth, appear dark on the surface of the Sun because they are "colder " than others.
This recent series of eruptions occurred at the "extremity" of the Sun, at its edge as seen from Earth, which means that it pointed in the opposite direction to us, but thanks to NASA's SDO satellite that has been observing the Sun since 2010 , we can have a fairly detailed snapshot of this event.
It is almost certainly an unstable sunspot.
Sunspots form in areas where magnetic fields are particularly strong, so colossal that they prevent some of the Sun's heat from reaching the surface. They are very common in our Sun during the years around solar maximum, which is when our star is most active . Solar maximum marks the middle of the Sun's solar cycle, which lasts about 11 years. We are currently fairly close to the beginning of the current solar cycle, called solar cycle 25, which began in December 2019. This cycle is expected to peak in 2025 and continue until approximately 2030.
