Hi Andrew,

It was a very interesting sunspot, but not the largst ever.

According to the experts (NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center in Boulder, CO), the sunspot that is dissappearing is the largest since 1990.

The largest sunspot ever recorded was visible in March and April 1947 and covered an area of over 7,000 million square miles; about a hundred Earths could be fitted into this area!

Paulett

Hi - not only is it big (not the record, but the largest for a long time!), but it's complicated. The magnetic fields are all tangled and that means that it's storing a lot of magnetic energy...this magnetic energy is what is released in solar flares, of which this region produced quite a few! A fun website to watch things space- and sun-related is spaceweather.com...take a look!