Dale asks if this increased sunspot activity is connected with 11/11/11. Again if it were, there is nothing to fear, despite NASA’s language here.
Nov. 5, 2011 — There’s a storm brewing on the sun’s surface and it could unleash its magnetic fury on Earth within the next five days.
That ominous warning comes from solar scientists at the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center who are tracking a huge group of sunspots that are slowly rotating to face our planet. As imaged by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) last Friday, this is the largest group of sunspots seen on the sun since 2005. The largest sunspot is 17-times the width of the Earth.
An image of the hot solar corona above the sunspots. Long loops of magnetic flux connect the sunspots and spread from the active region. Credit: NASA/SDO