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Largest Sun Spot In Nine Years Now Viewable 130

Posted by timothy from the hang-on-to-your-cell-phones dept.
Mazarin writes: "The BBC has an interesting article about the largest sun spot to come around in nine years. 'The spot, which is moving towards the centre of the Sun's disk, covers an area a dozen times larger than the entire surface of the Earth.' The article goes on to talk about other sun spots that have caused minor disturbances and gives a nice little warning about not looking at the sun during this time."
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Largest Sun Spot In Nine Years Now Viewable More

Largest Sun Spot In Nine Years Now Viewable

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  • If you dont have the telescope you can use any of the eclipse viewing methods to see the spot.

    Try a pinhole projector.
  • This is further incontrovertable evidence that man is destroying his environment!!!! Unless we stop recklessly burning irreplacable fossil fuels then this "hole in the sun" can only get bigger!!!!
  • Probably related: Here in Ireland, the T.V. reception from the Astra T.V. satellites [astra.lu] has been abysmal for the past few hours (at least for our receiver...) - maybe the satellites are being slightly fried...

  • Holy shit! Those refracted ants are fucking huge!

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • Who doesn't see spots after staring at bright light? We all know the real reason he went blind.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • It was originally a tool for protologists. Of course, nowadays, human evolution [goatse.cx] has made this anal-scope obsolete.

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • Actually neither the sun nor the moon are magnified when they are at the horizon, it's a really impressive optical illusion whereby our brains interpret the apparent size of the sun/moon relative to features on the landscape. When it's overhead there are no nearby features to compare with and for some reason it then looks smaller.

    Get yourself some appropriate household items and measure it. It's another reminder of how tentatively subjective our knowledge of truth is.
  • This [ntk.net] is what you're looking for. Several years of the Bastard, from operator to manager to A/P to network admin. When you've absorbed all of that, you might be interested to know that Travaglia (sp?) has been whoring himself out to The Register [theregister.co.uk] for a while now. It's still hilarious stuff. You can now find BOFH merchandise at Copyleft.net. Go here [copyleft.net], select "The Register" as a brand, and click "Submit query" to find a BOFH sticker, shirt, and hat. Isn't capitalism grand?

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • I'm a huge Sun fan, but I can't believe they have the nerve to continue airing those commercials. It may not have made headlines on Slashdot (a site which generally ignores real business news in favor of kids whining about stealing copyrighted music and movies), but the a.root server which manages the .com TLD was replaced with an RS/6000 shortly after Sun started that silly marketing campaign. Consequently, IBM has been the "dot in dot-com" since April or so.

    I feel like Sun has been floundering for a year or so. Java 2 rocks, Solaris 8 is awesome, but I don't see the company having a lot of direction... I just see a lot of money being spent. Like I don't understand why Sun would want to buy Cobalt, who make third-rate GNU/Linux toasters for technological neophytes. Whatever. I'd much rather see a Java 2 standard, better support for non-Linux based OSS operating systems, better hardware support for x86 Solaris, and more aggressive marketing of JavaStations and Jini. Oh, and a return to a BSD-based SunOS. :-)

    ---------///----------
    All generalizations are false.

  • This is really bad because I had a class that talked about it... but what is it with sunspots that cause us problems? I can remember what they emitt that gives us grief on earth...anyone else remember/know?

    ---
  • for more information on the type of sunspot (beta gamma delta) try here: spaceweather.com [slashdot.org]

    also, that article from the BBC was posted on friday, the sunspot is now at the center of the solar disk and pointed more directly at earth. the latest magnetograms and intensitygrams are up at the SOHO site here. [nasa.gov]

  • ... I actually wasted 30 seconds converting the hex to dotted decimal, just to see THAT. Of course, you just knew that the /. demographic would "break the code", didn't you?

  • Re:Is looking at the sun really bad? (Score:3)

    by Happy Fun BaII ( 234989 ) on Saturday September 23, 2000 @08:30PM (#758518)
    Well, it's more likely to cause blindness than masturbation... ;)
  • <ramble>I too look at the sun sometimes. It isn't really yellow or orange or white;

    It looks like a brilliant blue disk towards white in the center, and a yellow ring around it.

    Looking at the sun is no more or less dangerous than just being in the sun. The problem is that the sun gives off a tremendous amount of UV light, which can cook skin, eyes, retina, lens, etc. So just *looking* at it isn't a problem, it's the associated 'sunburn' that comes with basking in it that may hurt.

    So the sun can cook you, if you allow it to. It can harden your lenses, denature your pigmentation and other proteins, etc.

    I have heard carrots *do* have compounds essential for the visual system. I dunno if they help, but they certainly don't hurt!

    TV is it's own light source. The only thing additional light can do is reduce the contrast of the image on the screen, I think.</ramble>

    The nick is a joke! Really!
  • If you really want to be looking at the sun with a telescope, there are a number of ways:

    Use a filter on top of the lens, which filters the sunlight before it gets into the telescope.

    Use your telescope as a projector, and project an image of the sun onto a piece of paper , cardboard, whatever...

    But never ever rely on a filter that's put on the eyepiece: due to the high temperatures caused by the focused sunlight in the eyepiece and the fact that a dark filter absorbs all the light == energy == heat, it can crack easily - and once that happens when you're looking through it, you can kiss your retina goodbye.


    Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.

  • Another site worth checking out is SpaceWeather.com [spaceweather.com] which has daily pictures of the sun (and spots), coronal holes, solar flare and geomagnetic storm forecasts and other useful information.

  • So... (Score:1)

    by JWW ( 79176 )
    Looking at the sun at other times is OK??

  • radio (Score:1)

    by whydna ( 9312 )
    does this mean we can talk all the way around the world and stuff
  • I don't need to imagine what it's like to have a blind spot in centre-vision. I have one. Trust me guys, it sucks.

  • Nothin, you idiot, Dr. Feynman's dead. He's locked in my basement.

    Sorry - feel free to moderate me down, but it had to be said.

  • A magnifying glass refracts too. "Magnif"ing. "Magnif"ied. Get it?
    ----
  • Wow! A first post who doesn't say so!

    Gotta moderate him up!!!

  • err or not, damnit, i have yet to have a first post.. can i not get one? it seems EVERYONE ELSE can have a first post but NOT me... wtf...
  • Um, your retinas contain no pain nerve endings. Looking at the sun _doesn't_ hurt, and therein lies the problem.

    Cheers
  • Since you're a little child, you hear over and over that you're never, ever to look at the sun or you might lose your eyesight. But I've looked directly at the sun a couple times, and my eyes didn't hurt in the least. I didn't even see spots.

    Is there any truth to the "never look directly at the sun" maxim? Or is this just another old wives' tale, like eating carrots to improve your vision or not watching TV while the lights are off?

  • You just have to be lucky I guess.

  • Thanks for the link.

    It looks like a big round head with two eyes, a little too close set, with furry eyebrows, those pointed up at the ends and down at the middle (which indicates a squinting or frowning or cynical cast of face). You also see the diagonal wrinkles on the forehead. Immediately below the eyes is the tip of the nose. Because the sun is frowning so, the lips are pale and tightly compressed together, and somewhat askew; the right side is up and the left side is down, as if to ask sarcastically "What the Hell are you going to do about it?!" And on the right cheek is the scar he got back when he was a junior in high school, in that fight in the parking lot of the pizza parlor.

    Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

  • Is there any truth to the "never look directly at the sun" maxim? Or is this just another old wives' tale, like eating carrots to improve your vision or not watching TV while the lights are off?

    I suspect the TV one is an OWT (Old Wives Tale), but the thing about the sun is certainly not an OWT.

    After any solar eclipse, eye doctors see dozens of solar retinopathy cases where people have done permanent retina damage by staring at the sun. And this is with the Moon in the way!

    The eye can probably cope just fine with the odd glance at the sun. It'd be pretty crap if it couldn't since it's there in the sky, and there's sometimes you can't help but have it somewhere in your field of vision.

    Remember that the lens focuses the sun. Now get a lens, and focus the sun on a piece of plastic. Watch it melt. Think of your retina!

    About the carrots: carrots do contain nutrients which help night vision.

  • ooh! (Score:1)

    by bokane ( 36382 )
    Does this mean that I can talk to my dead father over a ham radio through the magic of plot convenience?
  • You mean I can stare at the sun when there aint any spots? Stare at it real hard and get my eyeballs burnt off? I have a perfect eyesight and I live in a tropical country! Sheesh. NEVER tell me you can actually stare at the sun. You CANT! It simply blows your eyeballs off and after two minutes, you'll see stars around ya.
  • Grrr...I've been racking my brains trying to remember where that's from. I give up, tell me!
    --
  • No, but I'm sure if you stare at it long enough you might start getting some headaches and drill a hole in your head.
  • Its from Pi. Potentially the most overrated movie ever created (it sucked ass, even if you ignore the low production values that were due to the fact that it was created on a shoestring budget).
  • It's from the movie Pi. Very odd movie, very good movie. Rent it, buy it, or steal it, depending on your mood, but watch it nonetheless.
  • It's from the movie, Pi You know, the one where he finds the pattern in the stock market?
  • Plus, it's funny.
  • Hmmm... are you sure you're looking at the sun? To verify, use a pair of binoculars and try to eye a big sunspot 100 time larger than earth. Report back.

  • Physics courses are very nice, but have you ever personally actually measured the width of the sun, or timed it as it marched across a fixed telescope's crosshairs? I've measured the angular width of the sun several times with a surveyor's transit (it's about a two minutes of time, or 32 minutes of angle) and it does not change from midday to sunset. Neither does the image of the moon widen as it nears the horizon. That either one seems bigger to your eye at sunset is only an optical illusion.

    If you don't trust that statement, which after all is sound thinking - really, what would you read off a weblog that you'd believe uncritically? - then get hold of a transit and sun filter, or for cheap, get sunglasses, two sticks and a watch with a second hand, and perform the experiment yourself.

    Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net

  • 0xcefb0c4e Here's that in binary 0000 x 1100 1110 1111 1011 0000 1100 0100 1110 You might wanna try it.
  • Solar flares, though, can cause geomagnetic storms which can seriously hinder HF communications.

    Good luck on the exam, and I like your anti-spam address.

    KC8DEI
  • Try looking up Fiegenbaum's constant 4.669. You will have to read a fair amount about it, to get the idea. Glieck does a pretty good job with his book Chaos.

    Pete.

  • I don't have a blind spot in my eye. However, every once in a while, I'll get this little blob in my vision (not in the eye, it stays there if I only look out of one or the other eye). I've described to others as having colors like a tiny drop of oil in a puddle of a parking lot. Actually, it looks more like a drop of water or saliva would if you put it on your monitor and watched as it magnified the phosphors of your screen and spread the colors into their basic components.

    These blobs appear for no apparent reason and grow and grow and eventually just move off to the side of my vision and go away. However, they are VERY annoying because I just can't see a thing where they are.

    I've visited an optomitrist and he didn't see anything out of the ordinary in my eye. I think it's actually something in the nerves between my eyes and brain. Possibly something that occurs where they cross paths. I've also overheard people that say that they get something similar when they get migraines. It also used to be and sometimes still is accompanied by a terrible headache (actually, the pain is more in my eyes) that I sometimes get after not enough sleep. So, perhaps it's like a headache/migraine without the pain.

    Nevertheless, they always go away and now I just live with them. I don't think there's an easy way to get rid of them. However, if anyone knows what they could be, I would be interested to know.

  • Save your eyes. Here [intellicast.com] is a nice picture of our Sun at Intellicast. [intellicast.com]

    I don't know how to interpret the bright spot which can be seen towards the centre of The Sun, but I suspect that is the sunspot based on the picture in the article attached to this story.

    If you live far enough north, you can check out the chances of seeing some aurora at the same site, [intellicast.com] by clicking here. [intellicast.com]

  • Isaac Newton practically drove himself blind by staring at the sun for hours regularly, watching for sunspots.

    To make it vividly clear how dangerous it is to stare at the sun, consider this. Total luminous flux from a given source drops down quadratically with distance; but so does the apparent angle. So the luminous intensity (luminous flux per unit solid angle) does not decrease with distance. In other words, neglecting absorbtion by the atmosphere, and so long as you are not near-sighted, a cell in your retina receives as much intensity from the sun when you stare at it from Earth as it would do if you were three meters from the sun.

    (Of course, some would argue the same should hold for the stars. The reason it doens't is that the stars' apparent angle is smaller than one retinal cell. However, if the Universe were infinite in space and time, with stars uniformly distributed among it, the entire sky would be as luminous as the surface of the sun. This is the well known Ober's paradox.)

  • Sure UV will damage your eyes a lot more.

    But very high intensity visible light will still blow your eyes out. I bet the nuclear blast was quite far away, also the light wasn't coherent, and Feynmann was probably lucky :).

    Btw people use microwaves to cook stuff... So it's not just UV.

    Cheerio,
    Link.

  • Normally, pointing out misspellings is a bit rude, but in this case it's a public service for anyone wishing to do a net search for more information.
    /.

  • Viewable? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    There are 60 posts before me, and I'm the first one to notice the absurdity of this story?

    Largest Sun Spot In Nine Years Now Viewable
    Posted by timothy on Sunday September 24, @12:55AM

  • TV is it's own light source. The only thing additional light can do is reduce the contrast of the image on the screen, I think.

    <ramblet>
    If you watch TV in the dark, then your pupils will dialate to accomidate the darkness, and as such will allow more of the TV Radiation in.

    Whether this is Good or Bad is left as an exersize.
    </ramblet>

    --
  • What happens if you hold a magnifying lens above ants on the sidewalk?

    Your eyes have lenses in the front.
  • Are you nuts? It's not worth the risk.

    Use the telescope to project the image of the sun onto a piece of paper.

    If the paper burns you can always get another one. If your retina burns you can't replace it - 10x10 pixel electronic retinas don't count. Going blind is NOT GOOD.

    There's also another thing to keep in mind - the high res field of your vision is actually rather narrow - maybe 30 degrees, and it's handled by that small patch in your retina called the fovea. If you look straight at the sun you are likely to burn that bit off and you won't have anymore high res vision. You'll have to read stuff on your monitor by looking at it in the corner of your eye and setting the fonts to 72 point or something.

    So even if you don't go 100% blind, it really really sucks.

    Losing your peripheral vision isn't half as bad (that still sucks - my colleague has RPI, no cure :( ).

    Take care,
    Link.

  • * <-- Sun


    \--/
    || <- telescope
    || or half binoculars
    ||
    ||
    ==



    ----------- <- paper with image on it
    GRRRR! Why doesn't Slashdot doesn't allow pre tags???

    I had to use tons of nbsp and brs to do this. VERY annoying. What's wrong with allowing pre tags?

    Link

  • Actually enhanced susnpot activity is linked to warmer, not colder temperatures.

    See this link. [uwyo.edu]

  • I wonder if they upgraded thier equipment so this would not happen again.

    There are no special points in the electrical system which are particularly vulnerable to magnetic storms. Working on thousands of miles of high tension lines, a magnetic storm induces a lot of current.

    Short of shielding every long distance transmission line, there is really no way to protect them.

  • that's almost certainly a migrain, but IANAD. go see a neurologist.

  • Sunspot info site (Score:4)

    by Twid ( 67847 ) on Saturday September 23, 2000 @09:05PM (#758560) Homepage
    Although it's geared towards kids in school, NASA has a great site on Sunspots here. [sunspotcycle.com]

    There is also an interesting article on the recent coronal mass ejection here. [nasa.gov]

    Also read about the cold summer of 1816 here. [islandnet.com] It is theorized that the earth was extra cool because of sunspot activity.

    Fun stuff... brings out the amateur scientist in me.

    -Todd

  • Feynman says... (Score:5)

    by rjh ( 40933 ) <rjh@sixdemonbag.org> on Saturday September 23, 2000 @09:08PM (#758561)
    In Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! (are there two Ns or just one in his name? I always forget), Richard Feynman talks about the Trinity nuclear test. He was the only person to look at the nuclear bomb directly, and suffered no permanent eye damage.

    According to Feynman (or at least, what's written in his book), it's the ultraviolet light which cooks your retinas, and that visible light simply won't do it no matter how intense it is. He took the simple precaution of watching the nuclear blast through a truck windshield, which is UV-opaque. While he had a big purple blotch in his visual field for several minutes afterwards, he did manage to watch a nuclear blast without permanent damage, which I think is pretty damn cool. :)

    From my own experience, I can submit anecdotal evidence which supports Feynman's UV-is-the-problem hypothesis. Once, while working in a laser holography lab, I wound up getting an eyeful of HeNe. While I was damn near blind in that eye for ten minutes afterwards, I had no permanent effects.

    ObWarning: I am not a competent eyecare professional, and don't try either of these stunts at home. Really. Especially not the nuclear one. :)
  • looking at the sun directly may be bad and it may be good.....

    Galileo went blind in the year 1637 at the age of 73 probably because he had a penchant for staring directly at the sun to make observations. of course one of the reasons he earned international fame is that he discovered sunspots!

    i say why not take your chances.
  • God I love BOFH. Anyone know if he made any past 15? The first 15 are at textfiles.com, but can't find anymore. . .
  • Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...that's right, now I remember. Haven't seen it since it was in theaters. And I thought it was a pretty good movie, even though some things didn't make that much sense...
    --

  • Uhoh this is it THE END! (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    ohmigod we are all going to die as the sun slips into instability and then goes nova.. i just yesterday (re)read the heinlein story "year of the jackpot" and it ends with a huge sunspot that appears on the sun's disc. and now... a huge sunspot appears on the sun's disc. ohmigod.
  • If you have a telescope with a sun filter/eyepiece, then you should check it out. it is pretty interesting. looks like the sun has a big outta control zit. just make sure you remember to put in the sun filter before checking it out. yowch!
  • The sun is not magnified at sunset by the atmosphere, it is refracted.
  • my mom told me not to look directly at the sun.

    So once, when I was six, I did.
  • We did a little experiment back in 7th grade or something close to that..
    If you take binoculars and turn them so that the large end is facing the sun.. and have a peice of cardboard it will display the sun spot. This one should be large enough to see on the projected image. This is safe for your eyes.. :)
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Actually, that's the standard problem with cheap sunglasses that don't block UV; the relative darkness dilates your eyes, which are then exposed to more-than-normal levels of radiation.

    I'm not sure about the TV Radiation part, but the theory is at least sound.

  • The article goes on to talk about other sun spots that have caused minor disturbances and gives a nice little warning about not looking at the sun during this time."

    I will be sure not to do my usual routine of going out every morning and staring at the Sun because of this large Sunspot.

    Sometimes when I read Slashdot I wonder if these guys ever get from behind their computers to see what the Sun looks like?

    ;)

  • Yup that is how I remember it... It worked well then and we were able to see several spots. The trick is holding the binos or tele still. E
  • i doubt it. i'm queer. that means you never have to ask twice.
  • Solar flares, though, can cause geomagnetic storms which can seriously hinder HF communications.
    Thanks.. I'll remember that. :)
    Good luck on the exam
    Thanks! The next testing in my area is in 2 weeks.. I'll pass it easy, but I wanna know my stuff, too.. :)

    . ._ _ .__. ___ ___ ._ _. _.. _. .. .

  • nslookup is your friend.

    ----------------------
  • Uhm, you seem like more of the moron here. You're drawing conclusions about this guy because he didn't like the movie "Pi" ??

    I guess it would've suited you better if he said "I didn't enjoy that movie" instead of that it "sucked ass" ?? Big deal. I'm a big fan of thinking movies, but I also feel that Pi tried too hard and wasn't that good of a movie (and I've seen it several times, I gave it a few extra chances because people continued to tell me I didn't "get it") Whatever.

    You've come off pretty childish in your post, moreso than the person who you're bashing.
  • Everytime I've seen people do it they get really hot and burn up. Weird.
  • Look Maw! I can see a sunspot! Just stare really hard and you can toO!

    -------
    CAIMLAS

  • If the tv image is bright enough, won't that prevent dilation?

    And if the image is dark, then dilation won't really hurt, right?

    Dilation is something that is self-adjusting according to brightness I think. So I don't know that 'more' or 'less' radiation is allowed in. I don't know at what point the pupil will dilate, but I do know that my monitor right now is bright that I can see across my room, with lights off.

    The nick is a joke! Really!
  • Excuse me? The magnification is a result of the refraction. Obviously you're less observant than the average (stupid) individual since you've never noticed how the radius of the Sun appears to increase at sunset.
    Here's a definition [dictionary.com]... and keep up those physics courses... you've almost got it.
  • While UV is bad in lots of ways, there is a much simpler way in which looking at the sun hurts your eyes: heating. The sunlight gets focussed into a tiny spot, it heats up and cooks your retina in one spot.

    You probably won't feel any pain, and the resulting damage is not directly visible--it's just like another blind spot. But once a significant part of your fovea (central vision) is damaged, you won't be able to see details anymore.

    So, in short, don't look at the sun directly under any circumstances, and get regular eye exams. There are lots of other things that can go wrong with your eyes.

  • Use a pair of binoculars to project the sun onto a large sheet of cardboard. (Only uncap one side of the binoculars.) The projection is safe to look at, and the spot should be visible if you make the projection large enough. As someone else said, it'll look like a freckle.

    If you don't have any binoculars, you can use a sheet of paper with a pinhole in it instead. You won't be able to make the projection as large though.
  • Gratuitous pi reference, huh?

    --
  • During my college astronomy courses, we went out to the telescope a couple of days using a filter that got rid of the nastiness of UV light, etc.
    The sun is literally covered with these "dark areas" which we call sunspots--it was really cool to see!
    So yeah it will produce a lot of weird disturbances to our electromagnetic field, but it won't be anything like the global catastrophe that was Y2K(-1)!
    ------------
  • im never lucky, i have YET to win 400 million in all the lottery tickets i have bought... i have yet to get laid at the ripe old age of 43... i am doomed to get the gates of heaven and god says "im sorry you just lucked out, we closed the doors"
  • I wonder if they upgraded thier equipment so this would not happen again.

    A large sunspot in March 1989 triggered a disturbance in the Earth's magnetic field that knocked out power lines in Canada.

  • Anyone know if this is gonna help me see aurora in Ohio? heheh or somewhere else? or perhaps make me memorize all known digits of PI? or help me find an illusive number behind all random life behavior?

    ----

  • about the sun part, im not sure either but it never hurt me.. my eyes still function.. im the same way with the tv and pc, cant stand background light.. has anyone heard of someone actrully being blinded or haveing there eyes damaged severely from looking at the sun ?
  • Well, there goes my mods, but I'll explain. He's not trolling, but trying to make a funny. This is basically lifting a line from Eminem's "Real Slim Shady," replacing "Dre" with "Feynman" to make it topical.

    The original lines are something like...

    But, Dr. Dre said...

    Nothin' you idiot! Dr. Dre's Dead

    He's locked in my basement

    I gotta get out more

    Jeff

  • I'd like to take this moment to remind you all that you shouldn't look at the sun during an eclipse [angryflower.com] either. Play safe, kids!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Yeah - a friend of mine learned this in another way - never wear a white t-shirt when arc-welding (unless one uses those wrap-around goggles, of course one would still need some kind of face mask, unless they liked to get hit in the face with bits of molten metal). He did that one day, and the light creeped up underneath the mask - needless to say, he had a very painful experience not long after he was done welding...

    I support the EFF [eff.org] - do you?

  • Is looking at the sun really bad? Yes (Score:3)

    by fence ( 70444 ) on Saturday September 23, 2000 @09:42PM (#758600) Homepage
    Ok, I'll bite on this one.

    in '77 when I was a kid, there was an eclipse of the sun on the west coast of the United States.
    My sister and I were psyched about it, and our parents talked to us about how to view the eclipse and we made pin-hole viewers, etc...

    To make a long story even longer, my sister looked at the eclipse several times--trying to focus on the sun to see the eclipse better.

    That day she had a blind spot form right in the center of her vision. She didn't tell anyone about it, hoping that it would go away. Finally after several days she 'fessed up about the blind spot and she went to an eye doctor.

    The doctor had been inundated by people with stories similar to hers...he said that she should consider herself lucky that she hadn't blinded herself.

    Imagine how tough it would be to have a blind spot directly in the center of your vision. It is a dark spot that you can't look around. Imagine trying to focus on someone's face and seeing nothing.

    So, Yes, looking at the sun IS really bad
    ---
    Interested in the Colorado Lottery?

  • kinda (Score:4)

    by Uberminky ( 122220 ) on Saturday September 23, 2000 @09:44PM (#758601) Homepage
    Amateur radio operators ("hams") will be familiar with this.. Basically, when there's more sunspots, the upper atmosphere is ionized more than usual. This makes sky-wave propagation (radio waves bouncing off the upper atmosphere, usually in the F2 region) much better because it defracts more. Makes it easier for the radio waves to bounce off of the upper atmosphere. So in times when there are lots of sunspots, DXing (talking long distance) is better. Of course this is basically only relevant during the day, because at night the ions created by the UV from the sun combine with the free electrons and neutralize (and are this no longer ions). Everyone feel free to rip this to pieces, I'm still studying for my ham radio exam.. ;)

    . ._ _ .__. ___ ___ ._ _. _.. _. .. .

  • Re:Feynman says... (Score:4)

    by deglr6328 ( 150198 ) on Saturday September 23, 2000 @09:51PM (#758604)
    i'm betting those HeNe tubes were less than 5 milliwatts though. IMHO saying visible light simply won't damage your eyes no matter how intense it is, is just plain false.

    the energy of a laser beam can be intensified up to 100,000 times by the focusing action of the eye. If the irradiance entering the eye is 1 mW/cm2, the irradiance at the retina will be 100 W/cm2.

    so if you have anything over 30mW, no matter what wavelength(except far ultraviolet and mid to far infrared which will cause burns to the cornea) in a direct beam impact of the eye you are almost absolutely sure deposit enough energy in your retina to cause fast heating and burn even considering the blink reflex.
  • Gallileo Gallilei has gone virtually blind after a few years of starring at the Sun into his primitive telescope (he was recorded as the first astronomer that used a telescope to study the sky, he built his own telescope after hearing about the first telescope built by Hans Lippershey (c1570-c1619) of Holland)
    So, yes, there is proof that it can be dangerous for your eye sight to look directly into the Sun especially with a telescope!
  • I remember that they never used to let me go outside during an eclipse because I would just stand there and STARE at it. God, I miss those days. Why can't we have a good ECLIPSE, instead of some stupid little spot? I can't even see that! A dozen times earth's diameter? WHATEVER! The MOON is bigger than that- I mean, look- it covers the whole sun. I want a frickin eclipse.
  • that link was very informative. Thanks.
    ---

  • 9:15 Personal Note (Score:3)

    by BMIComp ( 87596 ) on Saturday September 23, 2000 @08:13PM (#758617)
    When I was a little kid, my mother told me not to stare into the sun, so once when I was six I did. The doctors didn't know if my eyes would ever heal, I was terrified, alone in that darkness. Slowly, daylight crept in through the bandages, and I could see. Something else had changed inside me. That day I had my first headache.
  • If you look at the Sun at sunset, when its magnified by the atmosphere and dimmer, you will mostlikely be able to see it. It'll look like a freckle.
  • Hey,

    I have heard carrots *do* have compounds essential for the visual system. I dunno if they help, but they certainly don't hurt!

    What makes carrots orange is a pigment called beta-carotene, and this is a precursor to Vitamin A. The scientific name for Vitamin A is retinol because it has a specific function in the retina of the eye. Simply stated, Vitamin A allows the rods and cones in the retina to adjust to light changes, produce visual excitation and send images to the visual centers of the brain.

    Carrots are indeed an excellent source of Vitamin A via the beta-carotene precursors, but so are all darkly colored vegetables. Dark green vegetables have lots of beta-carotene but the green of the chlorophyll overwhelms the yellow and orange tones. Some sources of Vitamin A, in descending order, are liver, carrots, sweet potato, spinach, apricots, winter squash, cantaloupe, broccoli, crab, peaches.

    Extremely high doses of Vitamin A are known to cause fetal damage. This was discovered through the marketing and use of the popular acne drug, Retin-A, which is a synthetic version of Vitamin A delivered in very high doses. Just eat some dark leafy green every day and you'll be fine.

    The british SAS are rumoured to take vitamin A supplements for a week before running planned special operations, to enhance eyesight.

    Just my $0.02

    Michael Tandy

    ...another comment from Michael Tandy.

  • Ah, peaks in sunspot activity (every 11 years) are great. Unless, of course, you're trying to maintain sensitive satellite communication systems ...

    Anyway, there's a great site run by NOAA (http://www.sec.noaa.gov/SWN/ [noaa.gov]) that has updated images of the Sun, sunspot activity, solar storms, and aurorae activity. Definitely worth checking out, especially if you live in an area that could possibly see aurorae.

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