THE disc of this monstrous sun, sinking over the skyline of Baghdad, is marred by a few dark marks. These are the sunspots associated with the record solar flares and spectacular auroras that occurred late last year.
“I didn’t notice the sunspots at the time because I was too busy looking over my shoulder,” says Ed Harriman, who was filming the sunset for a documentary on the war in Iraq. Only when editing the images did he realise that he had,by chance, caught them on camera.
Mike Dworetsky, director of the University of London Observatory, says sunspots can often…
