The 5000-kilometer long bridges connect moderately dark penumbral regions across the cool abyss of two dark sunspot umbras . A movie shows that material tends more to rise from below and fall rather than to cross the light bridges. Bright bubbling granules surround the sunspot group . The impressive details on this recently released picture from the Swedish Solar Vacuum Telescope were made possible by new adaptive optics that correct for the blurring of the Earth's atmosphere . As days progressed, the bridge region expanded to fill the void as the sunspots moved apart and decayed.
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