A gigantic dark sunspot about 13 times bigger than the surface area of the earth is now visible to the naked eye towards the westward edge of the sun giving awesome view.

Dr. Chandana Jayaratne, Senior Lecturer in Physics, University of Colombo said that though this is a very rare opportunity one should not look at the sun directly as it will damage the eyes.

"You may look at the sun through a solar filter, a dark sooted glass, a couple of dark X-ray films for a few seconds or use the reflection from a basin of water. With the increase of solar activity once in every 11 years, this is something that was expected towards the end of last year or the beginning of this year. Sunspots are low temperature dark patches on the sun’s surface caused by a concentration of distorted magnetic field lines. With this sunspot the largest ever observed since the past few decades, four solar flares had flop-up since last Wednesday (28.03.2001) ejecting an enormous amount of energetic charge particles".

"Dr. Jayaratne said that in addition to the brilliant auroral displays at the north and south poles of the earth, we can expect several mishaps with the arrival these charged particles to earth during the cause of this week viz blackout of short-wave radio communication due to ionospheric disturbances, explosion of some power cables and transformers, voltage fluctuations and tripping of circuit breakers due to induce effects causing power failures in some countries, malfunctions in some long-distance telephone systems and above all the inactivation of some artificial satellites causing interruptions to the world’s TV and telecommunication networks.

"During the 1972 August episode of solar flares, among other damages, a 230000-volt transformer in British Colombia exploded. Apart from the human technology, it is found that these solar flares can also affect the movement of migrating birds and even cause the disorientation of flying pigeons. Whether the above mishaps do occur or not this incident has opened the eyes of scientists to develop techniques to mitigate such extrater — restrial hazards in the future" he said.