Sun Viewing

Irma Sandoval
The Paw Print

Adams State College students were given a rare opportunity to view the sun thanks to the Adams State Astrology Club on Feb. 4. Outside of the Adams State Planetarium there were four different telescopes each showing different views of the sun; one allowed people to see the solar flares on the edge of the sun, and another allowed them to see sunspots.
Along with the viewing, Astalos gave a twenty-minute presentation in the Planetarium explaining what the club was looking at in the telescope. The sun has solar flares because of the suns magnetic field. The equator around the sun moves faster than the north and south poles. This causes tension in the center of the sun. Eventually the tension builds and becomes too much so the magnetic field lines will pop out from the suns surface.
The magnetic field lines that erupt from the sun’s surface do not allow the hot gases that need to enter the sun to move to the core where they would help the sun keep rotating. When these gases cannot penetrate they stay on the surface of the sun causing the area to become hotter than the average temperature on the sun’s surface, making the black spot that can be seen. These sunspots are constantly changing.