Big sun-spots / Flekker på Solen

With the solar maximum coming up, the Sun has been filled with sunspots lately, and yesterday the huge sunspot 1504, which is facing Earth, had developed a very strong magnetic field.

Even with modest equipment (as here, using a Nikon DSLR with 300mm lens and 2x converter + Baader solar filter) the sun-spots can be seen easily.

As can be seen from the photo, the sunspots has darker inner cores - each dark core about twice the size of the Earth.

The Sun - 17 June 2012 with huge sun-spot AR1504 to the lower right