This picture show how big sunspots are. Many sunspots are as big as Earth! Earth never really gets this close to the Sun; we just put Earth in the picture to show how large sunspots are.
Click on image for full size
Original Windows to the Universe artwork by Randy Russell using images from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (sunspot image) and NASA (Earth image).
Sizes of Sunspots
Sunspots are very big
structures. They might look small compared to the Sun,
but remember the Sun has a diameter of 1.4 million km (870
thousand miles).
Most sunspots could swallow a planet! Many sunspots, like
the ones shown in the image on this page, are as large
as Earth! Most spots range in size from about 1,500 km (932 miles) to around
50,000 km (31,068 miles) in diameter. Once in a while, huge sunspots the size of Jupiter show up on the Sun's surface.
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