Maybe there is some hope for SC24 ramping up this year yet. This appears to be the largest SC24 spot to date. Previous SC24 spots have faded quickly, we’ll see how long this one lasts.
UPDATE: 9/23 It is already fading fast, see this animation that I’ve produced.
In other news, Jan Jansens reports that SC23-24 continues to behave much more like cycles in the late 19th and early 20th century. See this:
Click for the ful sized image
There is also a weaker, but distinct, level of activity at 22 years, the double sunspot of Hale cycle. The last three Hale cycles have been stronger than earlier Hale cycles. There is some indication of a double Hale cycle (~44 years) and at the top of the graph, we’re in Gleissberg cycle territory.
Now, for an interesting observation and speculation, note that at present, which is at the right edge of the chart, from the 11 yr line to the top it is all blue. There is only one other place on the entire chart where we can draw a vertical line from the 11 yr line to the top without it crossing some portion of color other than blue. Can you find it? (It is right at the beginning of Solar Cycle 5, i.e. the Dalton Minimum). Are we watching the beginning of a new 200 year cycle like what began with the Dalton Minimum in the early 1800’s? Obviously, no one knows. But the current transition is certainly unusual, and invites comparison to past transitions.
The magnetogram shows that there is one large ‘north’ (I think white is the North orientation) and at least three separate ‘south’ poles.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_mag/1024/latest.html
The magnetogram shows one large ‘North’ pole (I think the white is a the North orientation) and at least three smaller ‘south’ orientation (black) poles.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_mag/1024/latest.html
I’m waiting for more than one region in a rotation before I start to think SC24 is ramping up.
The heck with the spot, Basil’s graphic (did he do that?) is a wonderful, wonderful image. It’s the sort of thing Edward Tufte would be interested in. How many dimensions of data are in it? There’s time, intensity, sample size, and solar cycles and a bunch of relationships. Gonna have to read more about Morlet wavelet transforms.
If, indeed, we’re going to experience another Dalton Minimum, we can be thankful. Another Maunder Minimum will be a catastrophic event.
I bet this one will also go puff, gone! The other indicators are not showing any increase in activity.
I can see this spot, just projected it 1 minute ago with a 70mm F/9 Orion Refractor with Meade 26mm Plossl on a sheet of white paper, I see the main spot and the 2 smaller ones.
Interesting that the Maunder, Dalton and this latest big pause are all 200 yrs apart.
Will see if I can continue to see that spot later today and tomorrow.
And once again this web site shows why it has huge and growing traffic.
Fantastic graphic
(almost)..All I need to know the sun
Sun’s teeth (????)
I want to see a count of sunspots from Catania today. (1,2,3 or 5, 11…83.. etc)
If that’s the case we Americans have reason to be concerned because that is obviously deadly. NONE of the Native Americans present when it started have survived since the 1800s’ Dalton Minimum. 🙂
So, this is like a sliding fourier transform with a gaussian enevelope? Higher frequencies to the bottom, lower to the top, and magnitude ranging from blue (zero?) to red hot?
This is amazingly intuitive graph.
Just in time to confuse the NASA press conference tomorrow.
Aren’t the areas at the top of this wavelet graph increasingly affected by wider areas underneath? So the upper left and the upper right areas are most distorted by the adjoining missing data? If that is the case, we can’t draw any conclusions yet about the pattern in the upper right corner because it will be altered by the future…unless there is no solar activity to distinguish from data values of zero.
“Morlet wavelet transform ”
Oooh, cool. That took a little while but nice work! You guys are persisting.
I would say Janssens’ work makes 23-24 look like something new, outside his set of data of 10 and following.
“some hope … this year”
Like “change”, this is a bit wan & strained. By inauguration, an omen perhaps?
Basil,
Why use the smoothed sunspot numbers? Is there a real data set that can be used instead, i.e. one without smoothing?
Interesting that the Maunder, Dalton and this latest big pause are all 200 yrs apart.
Gleissberg (rhymes with Iceberg). DeVries (rhymes with Freeze).
This latest sunpot continues with the pattern that began 05/26/08, and that is at the bottom of both the Planetary A index and Solar Wind speed swings.
Isn’t that a tidy pattern?
This spot seems a bit oddly tilted.
“Joy’s Law” says the leading spot and leading magnetic polarity should be tilted so as to be closer to the solar equator.
This one seems to be tilted the other way.
Now, for an interesting observation and speculation, note that at present, which is at the right edge of the chart, from the 11 yr line to the top it is all blue.
These transforms are unreliable near the edges. Some information on that may be found on page 57 of here: here
provided I can get the URL to work. If not Google can find the reference: wavelet transform edge-effect addison 2.17
So speculation based on things near the edges is not well-founded.
John-X (12:09:30) :
“Joy’s Law” says the leading spot and leading magnetic polarity should be tilted so as to be closer to the solar equator. This one seems to be tilted the other way.
Joy’s ‘Law’ is only a tendency and does not hold universally, especially not for high-latitude spots where the ‘tendency’ is weak, anyway. Quite normal for this latitude and size of the spots.
Ric,
Yes, I did the graph (well, my software did it for me). I used the free PAST (PAleontological STatistics) software. Very easy, really.
Robert,
I agree that this is probably one of the best graphs I’ve ever seen to demonstrate a wavelet transform. We all (who are interested in this) already know the shape of SSN’s in the time dimension, so it is easy for us to see it in this graph.
Drew,
As for using SSN’s, I don’t know if the underlying raw data is readily available the way SSN’s are or not (frankly, I haven’t looked). But I doubt that it would change much, if at all. There’d be more noise in the chart, of course, but I think the main features would still come out the way you see them in this one.
Evan,
Thanks for reminding me of DeVries.
Drew Latta (11:15:46) :
Why use the smoothed sunspot numbers? Is there a real data set that can be used instead, i.e. one without smoothing?
Very good question ! and, yes, there is such a data set. The best would be to use ‘daily’ raw numbers, e.g. as found here: http://sidc.oma.be/sunspot-data/
How about it Basil?
Basil,
Further to Drew’s question are you using Leif’s latest modified SSN data?
http://www.leif.org/research/Corrected%20SSN%20and%20TSI.txt
http://www.leif.org/research/Corrected%20SSN%20and%20TSI.xls
This is unpublished, preliminary data [that can change at any time] so handle with care.
On the ” New paper from Christy….” post at 18:47:44
See 14:11:34 Line 6 for reference of modifications
Steve “This is unpublished, preliminary data”
Actually, isn’t that data from a paper by Lean?
Of course, any scientific finding can change at
any time.