Observing sunspots, Galileo discovered the rotation of the Sun… George Ellery Hale discovered that they have intense magnetic fields…But there are still many open questions about these enigmatic structures. EST will help answer them.

The Sun often releases flares, explosive events occurring in the solar atmosphere. They were discovered in England in the nineteenth century by Richard Carrington at Redhill Observatory, south of London.

The surface of the Sun is covered in features that look like needles or hairs, called "spicules". They were discovered in the 19th century by Angelo Secchi. But we still do not know their origin, their magnetic fields or their possible contribution to the heating of the solar atmosphere... Walk with Father Secchi to "The QuEST for Spicules", the second episode of our cartoons video series "The QuEST"! (See more at http://www.est-east.eu/est/index.php/outreach?id=745)

John Evershed discovered that the light coming from one side of sunspot penumbrae is shifted to the blue, whereas the light from the opposide side is shifted to the red. This phenomenon is known as the Evershed effect. Don't miss the story of the Eversheds at Kodaikanal Solar Observatory in the third episode of the cartoons video series: "The QuEST for Sunspot Dynamics" See https://tinyurl.com/TheQuESTseries for more information.