The disturbed magnetic area I mentioned yesterday has finally turned into what appears to be a real sunspot, but it is quite small:
Since magnetograms weren’t available to Galileo, Wolf, and Maunder, I wonder if a spot this small would have been detected in their time? Perhaps many of the spots in the period of the Maunder minimum were just to small to detect?
The solar flux is still quite low at 69, so we have a fairly quiet sun.
UPDATE: The spot remains without a number, and as seen (or not) on the latest SOHO MDI image, it is fading from view. It remains visible on the magnetogram. SIDC has a writeup about it here.
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Anthony,
You are absolutely correct; it is still only viable on the Magnetogram and the Mt. Wilson Magnetogram is not showing anything. But just think how frustrated the SWPC Wise Men in Boulder Colorado must be at this very moment! They know it is a SC24 sunspot but they can’t call it. They must have every real-time instrument at their disposal focused on the plage region right now and all they can do is sit and wait just like the rest of us. All those billion dollar toys and no one to play with.
Mike
TSI continues to drop.
http://i27.tinypic.com/256h0k6.jpg
Note: SORCE TSI readings are less than ACRIM and PMOD.
Hmmmmmm kinda looks like a sun spec huh
Bill
An old equatorial SC23 sunspot # 0987 may be coming into view.
http://sidc.oma.be/images/combimap800.png
If “north” is on the left, and is colored white in the magnetograph, and if “south” is on the right, and is colored black — then what makes the polarity different from cycle 23?
Here is why I ask. The picture at the link below shows the January 2008 cycle 24 spot along with what appears to be a large spot from cycle 23. (I say “appears” because it looks just like some others, even though it isn’t labeled.)
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/10jan_solarcycle24.htm
Next is a link to a picture of 3 spots from cycle 23 — note the apparently identical polarity relative to the January 2008 spot.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/28mar_oldcycle.htm
So what am I misunderstanding? The “old” looks just like the “new” to me, except for the size, of course, and the “latitude.” I must be looking at the wrong thing, since everyone else seems to see reversed polarity comparing cycle 23 to 24.
What a mess; solar cycle 24 was supposed to be a big one, but now that seems to be fading; original predictions for 25 being very inactive are still uncorrected. PMOD shows a declining trend for TSI; if that trend continues, and if sunspot activity remains low then a double whammy is incipient with less UV and X-ray heating in the upper atmosphere and more cosmic ray activity generally. An interesting compromise to the Svesgard/ Friis-Christensen model is NASA’s contention that a significant amount of incident CR’s have a solar origin, which in turn is dependent on solar flare and sunspot activity. NASA seem to be saying that a reduction in solar activity will not necessarily see an increase in CR’s because the sun is the main source of CR’s, and therefore any cooling through the Svensgard model based on a non-solar source of CR’s available through a reduced solar magnesphere will be muted.
Cohenite:
I believe that should be “NASA, what a mess”. Hathaway for one used 2 very distinct paradigms for his 24 and 25 predictions.
The former, a geomagnetic pulse about 6 months following prior cycle’s SSN max seemed strongly correlated with the following SSN max. Curious, but the idea being that a given solar dynamo state seeds the next state. Obviously, this works great, except when it doesn’t.
Sometime after that prediction went wrong, April 2007? he used a version of the Schatten model for his 25 prediction.
I’ve just added PMOD to WoodForTrees (ACRIM to follow) and there is a definite recent drop:
Monthly averages:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod
Annual running mean:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/mean:12
… and compared to sunspot number:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/pmod/mean:12/normalise/plot/sidc-ssn/mean:12/normalise/from:1978
REPLY: Thanks Paul, splendid!
The sun-speck is not growing. Even twenty-two years ago, without SOHO this event would not even have been observed. It also looks like sunspot # 0987 did not survive the trip around far-side. So the sunspot count is still Zero. Well, the grass in my law is growing so I can watch that!
I wonder if we are looking at a new class of events which were not previously observed. SOHO did not become operational until May 1996, so did it see anything like this during SC22-SC23 transitions? Also SOHO was not operational from June 1998 to February 1999 so it missed much of the start of SC23.
SOHO only had a mission life expectancy of two-years at launch. I hate to say this but is anyone aware of any backup plans for another SOHO at L1 or new missions at L4 or L5? I would very much like to see a mission to L3 to observe Far-side but you would need relays at L4 and L5 first. If we are heading into a Gore Minimum event, NASA had better get new birds flying and soon.
I checked the news feeds and no announcements from NASA, NOAA, SWPC, etc
Cycle 23 sunspot ?
I see a tiny spot the size of a pixel at the equator, about 1/5 of the way in from the left, on the April 14 at 00:00 image. Or is that a visible nothing?
I’m with Micajah, I haven’t been able to see any difference other than the latitude. What are we missing?
The warmists are pinning their hopes on sunspots and solar activity like this. I think I am going to start running my car an extra hour a day and burn some extra wood in my outdoor fireplace to help them out. 🙂
And then there’s the Gleissberg model . . .
“So what am I misunderstanding? The “old” looks just like the “new” to me, except for the size, of course, and the “latitude.” I must be looking at the wrong thing, since everyone else seems to see reversed polarity comparing cycle 23 to 24.”
You’re missing the fact that the polarity switches as the equator is crossed, you compared N & S hemisphere spots.
Thanks, Phil. That’s got to be it. I guess I need someone to draw me a line at the sun’s equator, so I can see which is which. Here is a photo I just found that shows spots in both hemispheres with different polarity in the different hemispheres:
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/sun/magnetic.html
Who says we can’t use anecdotes as an indication of cooling?
If their frequency increases, then we can say it’s a trend.
Via Drudge:
http://www.kcrg.com/news/local/17646694.html
The dot in the SOHO MDI image is fading and is down to only one pixel if it is there at all. I think is gone! SolarCycle24.com is reporting the same thing.
SOHO Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI)
http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/images/latest_mdi_igram.gif
The only good image of the sun-speck is on the Photospheric longitudinal magnetograms at Kitt Peak AZ.
Magnetograms
http://umbra.nascom.nasa.gov/images/latest_solisMG.gif
I suspect that this sun-speck is fading and will not be classified as a sunspot, unless SWPC does so posthumously in desperation. There are people at NASA and NOAA who have a lot at stake with the AGW confidence game but if they call this one wrong and voters start getting real cold next winter, their AGW fellow-travelers in Washington will stage show trials which will make Spanish Inquisition look like a walk in the park. Dear voters, it was not our fault; the evil scientist deceived to all of us. Washington will then pass the CO2 Enrichment and Fairness Act to encourage the generation of CO2, increase our taxes and subsidize private jets for billionaires. It is always about increasing taxes and giving the Pigs more power.
Mike
Phil, thanks for reminding me about the equator! The recent cycle 23 spots were so close to it that I hadn’t considered the north/south hemisphere reversal.
Mike, switch to decaf.
Sorry off topic
Here’s a short video from German television with Schellnhuber titled.
“Klimakiller Mensch” (Climate killer man).
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=700807910796451561
Yes, we all have been charged, tried and found guilty of climate murder, without the chance to offer a defence.
I’m going to check if I can sue German television for libel. They can’t label me a murderer. They go around calling everyone murderers – based on what? This is getting way out of control. Humanity now being labelled a pest.
REPLY: Libel laws generally don’t apply to broad labels for mankind. That would be quite a stretch.
Trying times are coming. Very few alive today have any experience with such times.
Hi,
Well over at SOHO the sun just flat lined.
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/today.html
STEREO doesn’t show much either except a possible SC23 spot coming on.
http://stereo-ssc.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2008/04/14/
I just built my own MDI animation from the GIF files in this directory.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/
I ran it forward slowly from 2008/04/11 and the sun-speck is definitely gone in the last frame posted today. The complete archive for today will not be available until after midnight. Date/time stamps are in lower left corner. Once I have the complete archive for today, I can pinpoint when the sun-speck appeared and disappeared. You really need better than1024x1024 graphics to see anything.
Some of the NASA animations are too long, don’t slow down for the interesting events or are not in high resolution. If we are going to be looking at events this small we will need better control of time sequence and I will need a higher resolution monitor.
Mike
It’s number 990 according to NOAA:
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/forecast.html
REPLY: “Region 990 is consistent with a new cycle sunspot.” if how the phrase it.
Hi,
Anthony I know they are desperately try to find SC24 spots but this is a stretch. If you look at STEREO there is a equatorial spot about to appear which is much larger than this spot. Also look at SOHO, there is 0 activity. I have not seen it this low as of yet. SC24 spot and no activity on the monitors, well this is indeed an interesting time to be here.