They find that the sunspot is turning towards Earth: what effects will that have?

The Pot Discovered the soonest visible sunspot from Earth. The discovery was made by the rover Perseverance, according to Europa Press.

The expansion of the star’s southern hemisphere was captured between August 17 and 20 by the Mastcam-Z camera, which is dedicated to taking daily pictures of the Sun to measure the amount of dust in the Martian atmosphere.

Europa Press quoted the news website spaceweather.com Spotted by the rover Perseverance on August 22, this sunspot appears at the eastern end of the Sun, visible from Earth. It is apparently connected with other such points on the other side of the Sun’s equator.

“Recorded by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, the movie shows two horn-shaped columns of plasma erupting from the new sunspot and, at the same time, from sunspot AR3413. The magnetic bridge connecting the two active regions could time their eruptions as they orbit Earth this week, which could have their impact on our planet. Doubles.” spaceweather.com

What are sunspots?

According to NASA, these are the darkest parts of the Sun’s surface because they are cooler than the rest. These intervals register about 6,500 degrees Fahrenheit.

These form in regions of strong magnetic fields and prevent some of the heat from the Sun’s interior from reaching the surface. They often serve as launch sites for solar flares and coronal mass ejections, so they are also called “active regions”.

What do internet outages have to do with sunspots?

According to Europa Press, solar flares and CMEs hitting Earth can affect satellite navigation and disrupt power networks. Hence, tracking the movement of sunspots is beyond academic interest.

One of Perseverance’s side missions is looking at the Sun, a rover looking for evidence of life on Mars. It explores the site of the Jezero Crater on Mars, which was home to a large lake and river delta millions of years ago.

The car-sized rover Perseverance landed in a crater on Mars in February 2021 and is collecting dozens of samples that will return to Earth over the next decade through a joint campaign by NASA and the European Space Agency.