All the astronomy sites are buzzing over this amazing image of a sunspot:
I don't blame them... it's gorgeous! And it's not even real! It's a computer-generated model of the magnetic field in a sunspot; near the center the field lines are mostly vertical and around the edges they are mostly horizontal. But to me, as a scientist as well as an appreciator of gee-whiz images, it's this shot that tickles my brain:
Click to embiggen.
Click it to see it cromulently embiggened. I know, it doesn't seem like quite as much to look at, but it is: it's the first time a computer has modeled in detail the magnetic field line strengths of a pair of coupled sunspots vertically, in three dimensions, into and beneath the surface of the Sun! Wow. You have to understand, magnetic fields are the devil's own work to model; they're fiercely complicated. The equations ...
