We can see him around the end of the week.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has given us a glimpse of an intriguing patch of the Sun not yet visible from Earth.
Perseverance photographs the sun daily with the Mastcam-Z camera system to measure the amount of dust in the Martian atmosphere. On August 20, 2023, the rover captured a large sunspot that will not be visible from Earth until a week later. The source says:
Perseverance can see sunspots approaching Earth more than a week ahead of us.
NASA’s Perseverance rover has discovered a large spot on the Sun that is not yet visible from Earth
Sunspots are relatively dark and “cool” regions on the Sun where the magnetic field is particularly strong. These spots usually serve as “launching pads” for flares and coronal mass ejections, which is why they are also known as “active regions”.
Solar flares and coronal ejections can affect satellite navigation and disrupt power systems on Earth, so tracking sunspots is not just of academic interest.
