Sol has been without a cycle 24 spot since January 13th. Today the spotless streak was broken with this high latitude and correct polarity spot. The current sunspot number is now at 12 according to SWPC.
The SOHO Magnetogram image below shows how the North-South polarity is oriented:
The real question is: how long will it last? Most of the cycle 24 spots we’ve seen so far have very short lifetimes, winking out in a day or two.
Does this mean that cycle 24 has commenced and if so when did it start?
REPLY: January 4th of 2008, over a year ago when the first spot appeared:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2008/01/04/solar-cycle-24-has-officially-started/
– Anthony
The real question is: how long will it last? Most of the cycle 24 spots we’ve seen so far have very short lifetimes, winking out in a day or two.
It has stopped growing, so will probably be just like the others. But in spite of that there are now good indications that solar cycle 24 is on its way and that we are past minimum. TSI, F10.7 have started their upturn, and cosmic rays [traling ~6 months] are on their way down [ever so slightly].
REPLY: That is my impression also. – Anthony
Have a look at the GONG images. The spot looks like a blob of off-white paint on a white background. Very mushy. I’m looking at the peach fuzz forming around the magnetic signature and thinking that’s the 1st step in it getting ripped apart. That fuzz migrates out ward in these spider webs after a few days. Then the polarities drift apart, and it’s lights out for Spot.
http://www.spaceandscience.net/id16.html
This link was posted on that year ago article.
Seems somebody is bound & determined to get a message out.
Looking at these anorexic SC24 spots to date, it’s high time somebody got alarmed.
Shocking!
I think perhaps confusing to some is the idea that Cycles can overlap. I know when I began reading on the issue it caused quite a bit of confusion deciphering how it all worked. I doubt it is worthy of an entire update of its own but perhaps on the next related entry (or as an update here) you could explain the very basics of the cycles and the transition between cycles. Obviously much of this is available elsewhere but clearly people still have a hard time coming across it and what else is a blog for if not sharing information.
I don’t know how much you intend this blog to be for the lamen, so disregard the suggestion if it goes against your general approach here.
After it first showed up on the magnetogram, it flared up pretty quickly. Thought it’d be larger by now, but it’s barely bigger than an SP {stuck pixel}. Seems to be in keeping with the rather anemic nature of SC24 to date.
Robert Bateman (21:59:52) :
http://www.spaceandscience.net/id16.html
Don’t be taken in by this flaky fellow.
Check this out:
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:kHxYj_J95P8J:issuepedia.org/Space_and_Science_Research_Center+ssrc+john+casey&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=17&gl=us
I have worked for Lockheed and know some of the people John Casy says he consulted for about the Space Shuttle program. They never heard about him. Didn’t happen.
I would say that the Planetary Index, Ap, is going back up though.
P.S. What happened to the “Reply”?
OT, & apologies for doing so, but related to earlier posts, yes the BBC has boosted & boasted the MASSIVE GLOBAL WARMING in Antarctica with loads of half-wits sorry that should have been concerned government reps from around the world down there for a meeting, & yes they did say that it was long thought that no warning had occurred there but now the jury was in. Just a shame it wasn’t a few months from now they had the perfect sunny day to film it all, blast it.
It’s the full PR job quite frankly, & I was expecting it at some stage. Sincere apologies on behalf of the UK.
Sorry… that was “I wouldn’t say… “
BTW, no mention of the failed CO2 study satellite on main news, but it is on their website. No mention of the Antarctic warming on the website but it was on main channels. Clearly it is time for mix ‘n match news stories again!
Lief Svalgaard;-)
What’s the betting this sunspot will fizzle out fast?
So is this a fair dinkum sunspot that can be seen by traditional methods or another sunspeck?
Doesnt the minimum hit at the bottom of the cycle? I realise there are overlaps between cycles but if the last 12 months has seen a declining smoothed and monthly value sunspot number graphically wouldnt that falling curve over the last 12 months indicate we havnt hit minim yet?
C Shannon (22:04:06) :
I think perhaps confusing to some is the idea that Cycles can overlap.
The current idea is that sunspots form from magnetic fields on the surface left over from previous sunspots. These surface fields are carried along by a circulation [just like the Earth’s atmosphere has] from the equator towards the pole, where they sink into the Sun and are carried by the circulation [which nows goes from the pole to the equator to close the loop] back towards the equator. During their journey the fields are twisted and wound up and amplified. Such strong magnetic fields have a tendency to rise so some of the field may get back to the surface again where it collects together into new spots that eventually disperse to provide more field to be carried towards the pole repeating the process. Meanwhile field is still being carried towards the equator at depth, will still be amplified, and will still rise to the surface, but this time at a lower latitude [because it has been carried along by the circulation towards the equator], so the next batch of spots appear closer to the equator, and the next closer yet, the whole belt where the spots occur slowly displacing towards to equator. It take some 17 years for this process to play out [for the spots to reach the equator], and in the meantime fields carried towards the poles will also sink into the Sun to start a new belt starting at high latitude and displacing towards the equator as time goes by. The net result is that you most of the time have two belts, one at a higher latitude than the other, both displacing over the course of 17 years towards the equator before dying [the low latitude one first]. Clearly this whole thing is cyclic and because of the two belts occurring simultaneously we talk about ‘overlapping cycles’.
Alan the Brit (22:45:59) :
What’s the betting this sunspot will fizzle out fast?
probably doing it as we speak…
twawki (22:50:01) :
So is this a fair dinkum sunspot that can be seen by traditional methods or another sunspeck? more like a low contrast speck. It has lived long enough to get a NOAA number [1013] so is ‘legit’.
twawki (22:53:31) :
Doesnt the minimum hit at the bottom of the cycle? I realise there are overlaps between cycles but if the last 12 months has seen a declining smoothed and monthly value sunspot number graphically wouldnt that falling curve over the last 12 months indicate we havnt hit minim yet?
The smoothed number is 6.5 months behind. Other indicators point to an upturn, so minimum is probably behind us [by perhaps ~6 months], see e.g. http://www.leif.org/research/TSI-SORCE-2008-now.png
The notion has come up that many of these sun specks would have gone unnoticed many years ago. I think I might have a way of testing that notion. I believe there were observers who would, at regular intervals, sketch the surface of the sun and make a drawing as photography had not yet been invented. A simple test would be to go back through these drawings and see if there are any drawings with only a single speck or see if any of these speckles are present in drawings with larger spots.
It would seem that the Royal Astronomical Society Library archives would be the place to look for 19th century sunspot drawings.
http://www.astro.ucla.edu/~obs/resource2.html
Maybe someday they will put them online.
Nah, I think it’s a birdhouse.
(That’s an in joke. You had to be there.)
Better call the curator to check. Can’t rely on those Google Sun images . . .
Or send a camera.
Location provided by curator:
C24 located c. 267,83435 m.
from salamader to NW, c. 345,678 m.
from inferno to south. Polarity
confirmed by furnace personnel.
Like I say, you had to be there.
crosspatch (23:22:38) :
It would seem that the Royal Astronomical Society Library archives would be the place to look for 19th century sunspot drawings.
How about some 18th drawings:
http://www.leif.org/research/Staudacher-1.pdf
Where’s the plasma gauge? Is there an evap pan?
(Why do they site them so close to the equator? They should follow their own 10,000 km. rule. )
If I’d only paid more attention or found out sooner about these things that are called “sunspecks” that only appear like a few times every a year.
Some OLD weird science publication I read waaay back in the past said “there were large amounts of sunspots from the sun at one time”.
Crazy talk, the sun’s energy is always the same, no matter where it is.
Who can question that CO2 is so strong now, it’s bringing down our rockets, turning heat to freezing and destroy the sunspot sphere of the sun.
Oh the humanity!
Truth is, natural Co2 comes in from the atmosphere at a steady rate, just like carbon 14 and rain from nuclei(or salt), all depending on the influence of gases from the sun/galactic forcing entering our atmosphere.