Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of the relatively cool dark spots appearing periodically in groups on the surface of the sun that are associated with strong magnetic fields.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun astronomy A region on the sun's surface with a lower temperature than its surroundings and intense magnetic activity.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a cooler darker spot appearing periodically on the sun's photosphere; associated with a strong magnetic field

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Decadal and longer changes in sunspot activity impacting warming and cooling cloud cover patterns are now being recognized as an important factor.

    Confessions Of A Climate Crisis Skeptic Larry Bell 2010

  • Officially, the flare-spouting region is called sunspot 1283.

    FOXNews.com 2011

  • As a long time fan of contemporary folklore, I thought it might be interesting to track this particular meme, so I used a popular search engine feature in which I registered a particular string (the word sunspot, in this case), and every day it sent me a summary of every new use of this word found on Web sites, in blogs, Usenet newsgroups and newspapers, along with links to these articles.

    ARRL Amateur Radio News 2009

  • As a long time fan of contemporary folklore, I thought it might be interesting to track this particular meme, so I used a popular search engine feature in which I registered a particular string (the word sunspot, in this case), and every day it sent me a summary of every new use of this word found on web sites, in blogs, Usenet newsgroups, and newspapers, along with links to these articles.

    eHam.net News 2009

  • "Whether [the current downturn] is an omen of long-term sunspot decline, analogous to the Maunder Minimum, remains to be seen," Livingston and Penn caution in a recent issue of EOS.

    GREENIE WATCH 2009

  • As a long time fan of contemporary folklore, I thought it might be interesting to track this particular meme, so I used a popular search engine feature in which I registered a particular string (the word sunspot, in this case), and every day it sent me a summary of every new use of this word found on Web sites, in blogs, Usenet newsgroups and newspapers, along with links to these articles.

    ARRL Amateur Radio News 2009

  • And the article’s study of variations in sunspot activity and cosmic rays goes up only until 1980.

    Think Progress » Snow Declares Resurgence of Taliban ‘Predictable,’ Bush Previously Said It Was ‘No Longer…In Existence’ 2006

  • A sunspot is a region on the Sun that is cooler than its surroundings.

    Disturbing Sun 1941

  • The storm erupted from a region known as sunspot 1302.

    msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines 2011

  • The region on the sun's disk known as sunspot 1283 has been spouting off with one flare after another, earning it the title of "Old Faithful" among solar physicists.

    msnbc.com: Top msnbc.com headlines 2011

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