Yesterday I lamented that the sun was blank, not only on the SOHO MDI, but also the magnetogram. Within a couple of hours, one sunspeck appeared. I cited Murphy’s Law. As one commenter put it: ” I think if you check back for the last six months or so whenever you mention the lack of sunspots on here, one shows up.”.
Perhaps if I stop writing about the lack of sunspots, a grand minimum will appear. Such power I wield. 😉
The plage area now has no characteristics of a classic spot as you can see on the MDI, but it did yesterday ever so faintly as you can see in a previous MDI image here.
It is rather faint. It is doubtful that pre 20th century astronomers would see it.
NASA’s Dr. Tony Philips, who runs Spaceweather.com also got sucked in by the spotlessness yesterday and wrote this today:
Where have all the sunspots gone? As of yesterday, March 21st, the sun has been blank on 85% of the days of 2009. If this rate of spotlessness continues, 2009 will match 1913 as the blankest year of the past century. A flurry of new-cycle sunspots in Oct. 2008 prompted some observers to declare that solar minimum was ending, but since then the calm has returned. We are still in the pits of a deep solar minimum.
Coincidences and commentary aside, the plage group that appeared shortly after these two posts yesterday is an oddball to be sure. Have a look at the magentogram:
It has the classic high latitude of an SC24 spot, but reversed polarity.
Jan Janssens writes:
” 22 March 09 – New SC24-group has reversed polarity… – The new sunspotgroup that is visible in today’s SOHO-images, has -according to the corresponding magnetogram- a reversed polarity (SC23/25). Though on itself this is not so peculiar (every solar cycle has about hundred such groups, or about 3% of the total), it is already the second SC24-group showing this “aberration”: NOAA 1003, visible for just one day (04 October 2008) on the southern hemisphere (-23°), had a polarity equal to that of a unpair solar cycle too (see slide 4 of my presentation). That makes 2 out of 13 (15%), if this group gets a NOAA-number. ”
Compare the current magnetogram to one where a true SC24 spot did form on Feb 24th, 2009:
The real question is: how long will it last? Most of the cycle 24 spots (and disturbances that don’t rise to spots) have very short lifetimes. Will this new one grow and be assigned a number? Or will it wink out?
We live in interesting times.
OK, given the Gore effect and the Watts effect, all we need are models to predict where Gore will speak and what Anthony will write.
It seems fitting that these models should be involve extrapolating the trends. I’m sure I can find some pretty good fits. Anthony’s writings ought to fit a negative-binomial. Predicting Gore’s next location can’t be any harder then predicting where son-of-sam would strike next.
Should I try a journal first or just present at a conference? I’m sure I can get my employer to send me to the next ORSA/TIMS. If I use simulation, WinterSim is always fun.
The problem with Murphy’s Law
If you wash your car it will rain, but if you wash your car to make it rain it surely won’t
Daniel
The Spot (Modified lyrics from The Blob by Burt Bacharach)
Beware of The spot, it creeps
And leaps and glides and slides
Across the floor
Right through the door
And all around the wall
A splotch, a blotch
Be careful of The spot…
If you buy the telescope of your dreams, it will surely rain the next 3 months.
Douglas DC (07:55:35) :
This is cheery – as snow files out my window in NE Oregon.
I might call this the Douglas DC effect, as snow flies out my window in NW California (Salmon Mts).
Brrrr!!!!
After seeing “Knowing” over the weekend, I left wondering just how real the scenario was.
Robert Bateman (11:07:37) :
Omigosh.
4. Sunspot group tilt angle changes are correlated with polarity separation changes
What they are saying is just the well-known fact that the smaller the group [or the dipole] is, the larger and more variable the tilt is, for the smallest dipoles the tilt is almost completely random. Just go look at a magnetogram [perhaps find one a little while ago with some stuff on it] and note how disorganized the very smallest bipolar regions are. And this latest speck was small…
Jim G (09:45:13) said:
Although if lots of spots are are associated with higher TSI,
maybe it should be the No-Watts effect….
HOW ABOUT Wattlessness?
Tom in Florida (10:46:43) said :
New word: wattage
Definition: the amount of time (in minutes) that passes between an announcement by Anthony Wattts and the appearance of an opposite effect
Usage: What was the wattage of the last sun spot appearance? About 180.
UNFORTUNATELY, THE ORIGINAL CANNY WATT (The Scottish Steam Engine One) has that one sewn-up. Suggest Wattation (Wa-Tay-Shun). e.g. The average Wattation of spots in 2009 was 97.
Okay flies-hadn’t coffee this a.m. 😉
Lief: I have never paid much attention to magnetograms until just recently.
2009/03/23 02:16 (SOHO) shows the white portion blown into an arc. Been seeing that a lot lately. Wonder if someone who has animated jpeg or gif skills/software can do one on the recent spate of plages/spots?
Maybe catch the dipole axis twisting, too.
Hey, this is a special time. We should expect the unexpected.
The appearance of sunspots and disappearance of sunspots is clearly related to the observer effects of quantum mechanics.
The act of observing and commenting changes the reality of whether the spot is real or observer transient.
The deeper question is: does observing a spot and causing it to be “real” or “unreal” via entanglement cause spots on other suns to be “real” or “unreal”?
When we observe a “Climate Warming Gore” on our world, does this cause a “Global Cooling Gore” to occur on another world?
Robert Bateman (20:05:04) :
I have never paid much attention to magnetograms until just recently. 2009/03/23 02:16 (SOHO) shows the white portion blown into an arc.
Yes, this is actually quite common as a spot develops. All spots rotate to some degree. There are studies that show that the spots that lead to large flares are the ones with the most rotation and twisting.
Lief said: There are studies that show that the spots that lead to large flares are the ones with the most rotation and twisting.
Rotation…..twisting…..remind me of supercell thunderstorms. Interesting. The supercells that have the most rotation and twisting with height are the ones that produce the intense tornadoes.
Interesting parallel. Thanks for that bit of info, Doc.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
savethesharks (22:33:51) :
Rotation…..twisting…..remind me of supercell thunderstorms. Interesting. The supercells that have the most rotation and twisting with height are the ones that produce the …
Ken Schatten refers to a sunspot as an ‘ion-hurricane’
Would the ion hurricane blow the white portion into an arc?
Or would it be more like a volcano going off and the twisting wind carring the ash in an arc?
This looks more like a wave spreading out over a pond.
Tsunami on the Sun.
Really neat to watch.
One last week blew into 2 separate arcs that diverged from a common center and travelled quite some distance. All the while the black portion formed a bar at 90 degrees to the arcs.
2 kettles with 1 common lid blown off.
Forget the darn specks, this is where it’s at. Lights, camera, action.
Robert Bateman (20:05:04) :
….. I have never paid much attention to magnetograms until just recently…….
Variable magnetism is in most cases product of electric currents (synchronous movement of charged particles), and there is lot of variable magnetism in the solar activity, and yet we are told there are no electric current flows there. ! ?
“yet we are told there are no electric current flows there. ! ?”
As with Calcutta’s cooking-fuel dung patties placed on the wall to dry: Some stick, some fall off.
gary gulrud (06:01:35) :
“yet we are told there are no electric current flows there. ! ?”
As with Calcutta’s cooking-fuel dung patties placed on the wall to dry: Some stick, some fall off.
Ones that stick count and for the rest omnia nihil sunt et reliqua minoris
Gary: That’s not saying much for the amount that is supposed to be feeding the fan.
vukcevic (04:40:04) :
Variable magnetism is in most cases product of electric currents (synchronous movement of charged particles), and there is lot of variable magnetism in the solar activity, and yet we are told there are no electric current flows there. ! ?
The high conductivity of the Sun and interplanetary medium [combined with the large scale] short circuits electrical currents, resulting in flares and other manifestations of the failure of currents to be sustained. For a current to flow you, paradoxically perhaps, need resistivity [otherwise you just short the circuit. The frozen-in condition that allows the solar wind to drag the sun’s magnetic field out into space is just a consequence of the irrelevance of currents. Currents occur at thin boundaries between magnetic domains and are subordinate to the magnetic field. To drive a current you need an e.m.f. and in the Sun that means a time-dependent magnetic field which can produce a circulating electric field. A time-dependent magnetic field can be produced by motion of magnetic fields. Motions of solar plasma is thermally driven [modified via the Coriolis force by solar rotation].
Leif Svalgaard (09:30:15) :
vukcevic (04:40:04) :
……..For a current to flow you, paradoxically perhaps, need resistivity [otherwise you just short the circuit.
As an engineer I do not entirely concur. Super conductivity is an example where resistance is not required. Variable magnetic fields and electric currents are inseparable, one cannot exist without the other. If charged particles’ spin is to produce consistent magnetic field, has to be of same orientation, which consequently will result in the particles flow along the resultant or an external magnetic field.
If the Sun did not have steady currents flow in its interior then its dynamo, or two dynamos (?!) if you whish, could not exist.
Lief wrote: “There are studies that show that the spots that lead to large flares are the ones with the most rotation and twisting.”
“Motions of solar plasma is thermally driven [modified via the Coriolis force by solar rotation].”
Forgive me for maybe over-simplifying this to meteorological terms, but the “rotating sunspots produce the MOST solar flares” idea is fascinating.
Kid in a candy store here, but humor me:
In supercell thunderstorms, the entire mesocyclone rotates, and that can be easily seen on radar. This rotation helps produce the largest, most destructive and long-lived tornadoes on Earth.
With the Coriolis Force at work on the Sun > also causing the “supercell” [LOL for lack of a better word] sunspots to twist and rotate > which serve as a mechanism > to help launch giant solar plasma tornadoes > but in the “opposite” direction > out into space.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2008/05/28/2258141.htm
Heh heh like I said forgive me if I am being simplistic in trying to make a connection between the too but this is damn fascinating.
Chris
Norfolk, VA
vukcevic (10:16:07) :
If the Sun did not have steady currents flow in its interior then its dynamo, or two dynamos (?!) if you whish, could not exist.
You are confusing several things [spin, pairing, …].
There are plasma flows [not large-scale currents] in the solar interior driving the dynamo, but the plasma is electrically neutral. To drive an electrical current in the solar interior you need a voltage difference [and spin and superconductivity do not apply here], that is a separation of charges and to drive large-scale currents you need one part of the Sun [or even the solar system] to be charged relative to another part with the opposite charge, and you need something to separate the charges to prevent them from shorting immediately [because of the high conductivity]. If you have two magnetic fields of opposite polarity close together and enough charged particles free to move you can get a current by particles gyrating in opposite directions right at the boundary between the fields [like in the heliospheric current sheet and the Earth’s plasmasheet in the magnetospheric tail], but the current is a consequence of the field and the particles present, not the other way around.
CORRECTION: I said “In supercell thunderstorms, the entire mesocyclone rotates.”
I MEANT to say “In supercell thunderstorms, the entire cell rotates [a mesocyclone]…
Haha a “rotating mesocyclone” is a little redundant, don’t you think?