Sunspot, Granulation and Convective Flow

G-band movie of a sunspot on the Sun on 28 Aug 2007 from the SOT instrument on the Hinode spacecraft. In this movie, you can see granulation (convective flow) of plasma around a sunspot. This looks a lot like a pot of boiling water. For a good example of convective flow, look into your miso soup... The sunspot suppresses convection due to the strong magnetic field. Sunspots only look dark in contrast to the surrounding very bright Sun. In isolation, they would be quite bright as well. Real-time pictures of the Sun: Movies of events/features: SDO/AIA: