Sunspots are darker, cooler patches on the Sun’s surface, where tangled magnetic fields hold back the heat rising from inside. They come and go over days or weeks and are carried across the disc by the Sun’s rotation, about once every 27 days as seen from the Earth. Their number rises and falls over a cycle of about eleven years; the current cycle peaked around 2024–2025. Big sunspot groups can launch solar flares and clouds of particles that, on reaching the Earth, cause auroras. The groups shown here come from the daily report of the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center. Never look at the Sun without proper eclipse glasses or a solar filter.
How many sunspots are on the Sun today?
Computing…
Questions and answers
Why are sunspots dark?
They are about 1,500 °C cooler than the surface around them. They would still glow brightly on their own; they only look dark by contrast.
Do sunspots cause auroras?
Indirectly: active regions around sunspots launch eruptions whose particles, a day or two later, can light up auroras near the poles.
Where the numbers come from
Values refresh every second in your browser; the published data are checked every 10 minutes and updated several times a day.