SUNSPOT 1039

EASY COME, EASY GO: Sunspot 1039 is about to disappear over the sun's western limb, but the sun won't remain blank for long. Another active region is approaching from the east, shown here in a Jan. 5th image from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory:

The approaching region is old sunspot 1035. It has been transiting the far side of the sun since Dec. 20th. After all this time, is it still a dark-cored behemoth or just a decaying tangle of magnetic fields? Monitoring is encouraged: solar telescopes.

SOURCE:http://spaceweather.com/