Usually, and that means in the past year, when you look at the false color MDI image from SOHO, you can look at the corresponding magnetogram and see some sort of disturbance going on, even it it is not visible as a sunspot, sunspeck, or plage area.
Not today.
Left: SOHO MDI “visible” image Right: SOHO Magnetogram
Click for larger image
Wherefore art though, cycle 24?
In contrast, September 28th, 2001
lgl (22:28:39) :
tallbloke,
sun’s path is at the point of balance between all the gravitational forces acting on it at each moment in time.
Not so sure about that, and this: “So when for example Saturn is nearby, the jupter – sun distance increases a bit compared to what it would be when Saturn is further away.” is a good illustration. The change in the Sun’s motion is caused by the Ju-Sa interaction, not because Saturn is pulling the Sun.
Well this is where my brain starts to fry too. Saturn pulls Jupiter further away from the sun at conjunction, at the same time Jupiter pulls Saturn closer, their combined effect should be pulling the sun closer to them, but the sun is ‘leaning back against their combined weight a bit like a hammer thrower, which you’d think would move the sun further from the barycentre and J+S towards it…
What I’m bearing in mind at the moment, is that the orbit’s aren’t elliptical, and gravity is a mathematical construct we impose on reality. I like Geoff’s approach of using the JPL data directly, since it’s the best we have, but even that has limitations. And then there’s the eccentrifical force to consider 🙂
Since absolute magnitude of sunspot area asymmetry, total sunspot area, sunspot number, and geomagnetic aa index are all related, please bear in mind that what you are claiming is equivalent to claiming that barycentric motion causes the sunspot cycle.
Hi Paul,
Since the correlation coefficient isn’t that high, it can only one of at least two factors, and depending on timings etc, it may be a modulating factor rather than a principle cause. Especially in view of the fact the sun does anomalous things as what is happening now. And anyway, I’m only claiming something about some data I’ve compared, as for what follows from it, let the chips fall where they may.
Since absolute magnitude of sunspot area asymmetry, total sunspot area, sunspot number, and geomagnetic aa index are all related, please bear in mind that what you are claiming is equivalent to claiming that barycentric motion causes the sunspot cycle.
Hi Paul,
Since the correlation coefficient isn’t that high, it can only one of at least two factors, and depending on timings etc, it may be a modulating factor rather than a principle cause. Especially in view of the fact the sun does anomalous things such as what is happening now. And anyway, I’m only claiming something about some data I’ve compared, as for what follows from it, let the chips fall where they may.
tallbloke,
“The change in the Sun’s motion is caused by the Ju-Sa interaction, not because Saturn is pulling the Sun.”
Actually I think this was nonsense from me. It’s just the AM conservation thing again. The Sun-Ju distance is almost the same as Ju-Sa distance so the gravity from Saturn is miniscule compared to the Sun’s.
When you get a moment have a look at hotrod’s post at (17:54:00) http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/04/01/nasa-headline-deep-solar-minimum/
Showing a remarkable similarity of the steep-walled, nonlinear rogue wave phenomena to the 1998 global temperature spike, he then asks the question if this quantum idea could carry over to understanding solar cycles and waves.
Interesting thought….please read his post.
Not that I’d think you would get anything more interesting than tides, but depending on the structure of how your solver accesses the equations, you could model such frictionless “bearings” quite easily: Just add a repulsive force with a steep gradient dependend on distance to solar radius for these, modelling buoyancy. In order to avoid clustering, a second such force, dependend on the distance between the probes could simulate inter-“atomic” repulsion. Don’t use too many probes …