It has been a strange day. Fires have evacuated the Mt. Wilson Observatory in California, and SOHO images have not been updating all day. Power is down at the mountain and the webcam has gone offline. See status here. Mt. Wilson Observatory is now in the hands of nature and CDF. Let’s hope CDF wins.
It is about 4 hours now past ooGMT Sept1, 2009 I’ve checked all my sources. Besides the fate of Mt. Wilson, we’ve all been waiting to find out two things:
1- Will we have a spotless calendar month for the sun in August 2009?
2- Do I still have my solar mojo?
The Catania sunspot drawing shows nothing for the 31st.
Other solar observatories, Uccle in Beligium, Locarno in Germany, both show nothing on August 31st sketches.
This animation from SIDC of the past 30+ days shows nothing for August but DOES show group 1025 popping up on 9/1/2009
http://sidc.oma.be/html/cmap_animator.html
I also checked SIDC’s sunspot report data for August, nothing.
It looks like the spot today, group 1025, squeaked by and was not observed until after August 31st game clock ran out at 00 GMT 91/2009
Then I checked NOAA SWPC….
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/ftpdir/latest/DSD.txt
Message to NOAA Space Weather: Out damned spot!
And wouldn’t you know it, they have something whereas last year it was the other way around…NOAA had nothing, SIDC (via Catania) did…so where does that leave us?
Leif said last year that SIDC had the last word…so unless they change their report, we may indeed have a spotless calendar month.
We’ll have to see what happens when their report comes out tomorrow. They issue a new report on the first of each month.
http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/
Watch that space.
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Back at “Testing my solar power” [Frank Perdicaro (11:06:14)] I
mentioned this might be a problem.
Last night I spent a few minutes watching the fire on Wilson below SOHO
burn brightly. My house is 40 miles from Mt. Wilson, and I could see
the flames through the smoke with my naked eyes. This is a _big_
fire.
Is 1025 a cycle 23 or a cycle 24 sunspot? Spaceweather says that 1025 seems to be fading away already, but the location isn’t really shown — all that is given is the number 1025 with no small circle to pin down the locatin.
C Colenaty (21:40:48) :
Is 1025 a cycle 23 or a cycle 24 sunspot?
At solarcycle24.com it is called a cycle 24 spot.
Did someone just painted this spot there? Spaceweather seem to be the only one showing a sunspeck.
The spaceweather picture of the new “spot” was pretty anemic this morning. Did it mature?
1025 may be the smallest speck ever assigned a sunspot number. If it keeps fading, I predict NOAA will rescind the number…
Spaceweather seemed very pleased yesterday about the emergence of the ‘speck’ and said it was 15 deg. north of the Equator.
http://www.spaceweather.com/swpod2009/31aug09/Pete-Lawrence2.jpg?PHPSESSID=ra8vjvl4u0porp32sd8nmvc384&PHPSESSID=1menfqr2jrno2u9cmijlm5q3a2
……..though now it probably history.
Ray (21:53:16) :
Did someone just painted this spot there? Spaceweather seem to be the only one showing a sunspeck.
I think it is not a sunspeck because it has been in the same place for two years. Anyway, SpaceWeather has numbered a new region today, although there are not reports on sunspots, flares, etc.
looks like the watts effect is still good!!!!!!
nice one lol
http://www.solen.info/solar/
The Watts effect is in full force.
Is smoke going to get on the mirrors? (particulates, microscopic resin droplets, etc)
It is apparently a cycle 24 spot. And for as low a latitude as it is, it means cycle 24 is well under way. I don’t think spots normally show up this close to the equator until well after the cycle has begun. Are we at “solar max” yet?
(only somewhat sarcastically).
Well, given it’s been September downunder for almost 16 hours, August was certainly a whole month without a sunspot on this side of the International Date Line
Anthony, should it not be Catania instead of Catainia?
Catania lies in Sicily.
REPLY: You are correct. Thanks for helping me fix the spelling error. – Anthony
What puzzles me is that this cycle 24 spot is at about 15 degrees North latitude on the sun. That is where you see spots during solar maximum. Are we at solar maximum for cycle 24?
A strange day indeed…the official SOHO NASA site looks to be down from my side of the world, but perhaps we may get some Continuum pics though as spaceweather.com is displaying real time SOHO cut down versions.
Initial results are showing 1025 wont pass the Layman’s test.
We are discussing the latitude of 1025 at solarcycle24.com, it probably needs to be confirmed whether that is the case yet…. Leif?
Jean Meeus (22:54:18) :
Anthony, should it not be Catania instead of Catainia?
Catania lies in Sicily.
REPLY: You are correct. Thanks for helping me fix the spelling error. – Anthony
I pointed that out 2 days ago….must have been missed.
Well 1025 is (or was) a small one. But I did see it on GONG. Both Teide and Big Bear did have it. First I was not sure. I needed to clean my monitor to get rid of my monitor specs first.
http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/
/Sven
Looking at the picture, it seems almost as though the sun is “mooning” us.
Two very faint spots can be seen here
http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/img/jpg/iqa/200908/tdiqa090831/tdiqa090831t1334.jpg
and the magnetic signature here
http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/img/jpg/bqa/200908/tdbqa090831/tdbqa090831t1334.jpg
and it is for the 31st time 13.34
it is from GONG http://gong2.nso.edu/dailyimages/
Might have been no sunspots downunder but it has also been the hottest August on record:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,26011736-661,00.html
BOM official report due out in day or so will probably confirm.
If you care to peruse my blog post on the subject, you’ll find that Anthony has no more paranormal powers than I do. The magnetogram is as blank as blank can be, the STEREO image for the (almost) farside shows nothing.
So I’m betting on nothing for the forseeable future (the next week or so).
I’m baffled by the reference to 9/1/2009 because according the site, the last date recorded is 8/31/2009
Geoff Sharp (23:11:10) :
We are discussing the latitude of 1025 at solarcycle24.com, it probably needs to be confirmed whether that is the case yet
1025 N17E32 169 0010 Bxo 03 02 Beta
SIDC has August 2009 as 0.0
SIDC’s report: spotless month of Augsust!!
link: http://sidc.oma.be/products/ri_hemispheric/