Why are sunspots black?

The sun is a ball of fire. The star's surface gets more and more chaotic as the sun progresses through its 11-year cycle. Sunspots are dark, planet-size regions that form in the sun's lower atmosphere as a result of intense magnetic disruptions.

Sunspots look black to most telescopes. Why do they look like they're black?

Sunspots are not black. The darkness is created by the contrasting heat of sunspot and their surroundings.

According to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, sunspots are only dark in contrast to the sun. It would be as bright as a full moon if you placed average sunspot elsewhere in the night sky.

The most detailed image of a sunspot we've seen was snapped by the largest solar telescope.

The gas underneath a sunspot emits 25% more light than the rest of the sun, which is why the sunspot is so dark.

According to the National Weather Service, the average temperature of a sunspot is about 6,300 degrees Fahrenheit (3,500 degrees Celsius), but the surrounding photoosphere blazes at around 10,000 F (5,500 C).

According to the NWS, sunspots are cool because they form in areas with strong magnetic fields, which is 2,500 times stronger than Earth. The flow of heat from the sun's interior to the surface is disrupted because of the increased magnetic pressure on sunspot.

There are some dangerous side effects of the sunspot's magnetic energy. The magnetic-field lines around sunspots can snap into new configurations when they become too tangled. An explosion of energy known as a solar flare can be created by this energy interacting with the surrounding gas.

There is a new tab that inquires about the possibility of a solar storm destroying Earth.

The more sun spots there are on the sun, the more likely a flare is to erupt. Sunspots are more likely to occur at the end of the sun's activity cycle.

The heat from a flare can cause another explosion called a coronal mass ejection, in which charged solar particles blast straight out of the sun's atmosphere.

The majority of CMEs sail into space. There can be harmful consequences if aCME is aimed at Earth. Life on Earth is protected by our planet's magnetic field, but astronauts working in space may be hit with higher than normal doses of radiation.

The resulting rain of charged particles through our planet's atmosphere causes the northern lights to appear at lower latitudes than usual. It's thanks to a big, dark dot on the sun that you can see the colors in the sky.

It was originally published on Live Science