Your article says that sunspots are 3,500°C. Yet further in the article, it says that the solar flare of Nov. 4, 2003, was 41 million°C. Is that a typographical error?

Bruce Barnbaum
Granite Falls, Wash
.

That’s no typo. The release of magnetic energy in the sun’s atmosphere during a flare heats the material that’s been ejected .—S. Perkins