The most active sunspot of the year, sunspot 1029, has spent the past week transiting the far side of the sun. It is still invisible from Earth, but the active region is coming into range of cameras onboard NASA's STEREO-B probe. The spacecraft beamed back this extreme ultraviolet image just hours ago:
A farside eruption on Nov. 5th (movie) suggests that the sunspot is still active. In late October, the last time we saw it on the Earth-facing side of the sun, sunspot 1029 unleashed more than 10 C-class solar flares, single-handedly quadrupling the total number of flares in all of 2009. The sun's rotation will turn the active region back toward Earth about four days from now. Until then, STEREO-B will keep us informed. Stay tuned.
