June Parisieny age 15, of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada for her question:

How big are sunspots?

The largest of the dark and stormy sunspots sprawl 100,000 miles or more from side to side. The diameter of the earth is somewhat less than 8,000 miles, so a large sunspot may be more than 12 times wider than our globe. Such a whopper is usually the major spot of a pair or a rash of smaller spots. Its total area may be great enough to encompass all the planets of the solar system. However, sunspots of this size are rare. Most of them are around half this size and many are small disturbances called pores.

Sunspots are thought to be magnetic storms on the seething surface of the sun. They look darker than their dazzling surroundings because they are about 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit cooler. The darkest blot in the center of each spot is the umbra. A major sunspot may have an umbra 50,000 miles wide surrounded by a paler penumbra that extends to a width of 100,000 miles. Rashes of large spots are big enough to be seen from the earth    though naturally no sensible person ever looks directly at the dazzling sun.