The surface of the sun is like a bubbling cauldron of hot plasma. Sunspots - darker and cooler areas than the rest of the surface - come and go. Huge plasma magnetic field arcs form near them. Occasionally, magnetic short circuits hurl huge streams of charged particles and energy towards the Earth. This activity peaks approximately every eleven years and endangers our satellites, global communication systems and the sense of direction of birds.
On this evening, astrophysicist Eva Sextl from the LMU University Observatory will provide an insight into these complex processes. And she will tell the story of the Japanese amateur astronomer Hisako Koyama, whose decades of solar observations have made a decisive contribution to our understanding of sunspots and thus of space weather.