The Central Weather Bureau yesterday displayed an unusual photograph captured while it was observing sunspots on Oct. 29, which shows a Boeing 737 aircraft flying across the solar disk.
The photograph was posted on the Ministry of Transportation and Communications’ Facebook page, which was set up to let the public know which services and businesses are handled by the various administrative agencies of the ministry.
The photograph also drew public attention to the bureau’s research on the sunspots, which are a temporary phenomenon that appear as dark spots compared with surrounding regions and are an important indicator of solar activity. According to the bureau’s Astronomical Observatory, the black dot to the right of the aircraft which appears on the edge of the solar disk is a large sunspot, with almost the same width as Jupiter.
Photo courtesy of the Central Weather Bureau
Cheng Chen-fong (鄭振豐), a specialist at the Astronomical Observatory, said the sunspot was the largest one detected in the past 25 years.
As a comparison, the observatory also placed another image of the sun adjacent to the photograph taken on Oct. 21, when the sunspot was closer to the center of the solar disk.
Commenting on the significance of the sunspot research, the observatory said that charged particles are emitted during solar activity, adding that the ionosphere above the Earth — a region in the upper atmosphere — can be affected by the charged particles.
“The charged particles are guided by the Earth’s magnetic field to either the North Pole or the South Pole. They then clash with the atmosphere about 100km above the Earth and produce auroras, also known as the northern lights or the southern lights,” the observatory said.
Because the ionosphere can be disrupted, telecommunication services utilizing the ionosphere can be affected, the observatory added.
The observatory has been monitoring sunspot activity since 1984 and is one of the partners of the Solar Influence Data Analysis Center of the Royal Observatory of Belgium.
It monitors long-term changes in solar activity and contributes to global solar research by sending in its data.
In response to growing demand for information on changing environmental conditions within the solar system, the observatory monitors the changes in intensity of solar activity by taking images of the sun at different wavelengths.
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