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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The oxygen pressure at 5700 ft is about 9.6 kPa compaired to about 13.3 KPa at sea level… it must burn slower up there.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/realtime/mdi_igr/1024/latest.html
The latest SOHO image is showing the spec/pimple/pore at 9:15 about 1/4 accross the disk
Geoff Sharp (03:16:08) :
But what is your opinion of the latitude of 1025, is it closer to the equator than would be considered normal for this stage in the cycle?
———–
I told many a long time ago that quite a few debates would happen early on with this cycle because of latitude (Or in the transition phase ). Because the solar magnetic field is not the same as usual, if you can use this term. So we should be seeing sunspot groups showing up closer to the equator. But maybe Leif will disagree.
Cal Smith (06:35:45) :
NASA’s dilemma:
Staying with a number confirms Watt’s infallibility.
Removing the number lends credence to the sun playing a roll in climate.
Think they will confirm Watt’s Effect, though, as expected by Livingston & Penn, this effect will be decreasing with time.
Not sucessful in projecting the spot this morning.
Hard numbers appear as 2 SOHO MDI Continuum 1024 x 1024 images emerge:
Solar disc = 734,417 pixels
18:09 UT 08/31/2009
Umbral = 3 pix < 163 Penumbral = 10 pix <=70
Pen=13.6 x 10E6 uncorrected
corrected = unc./2 x 1.25 = 8.5 x 10E6
Umbral = 4.08 x .06 = .245 x 10E6 unc = .15 x 10E6 corrected
Spot is Penumbral.
Primary spot was 6 pixels = 5.1 x 10E6 corrected. At threshold of visibility.
10:24 UT 09/01/2009
Umbral = 2 pix < 163 Penumbral = 8 pix <=70
Pen = 10.9 x 10E6 uncorrected
corrected = unc./2 x 1.15 = 6.26 x 10E6
Umbral = 2.72 x .06 = .163 x 10E6 unc = .094 x 10E6 corrected
Spot faded.
Really, when the numbers are added up, this type of spot, while it can be projected, makes little difference in the level of Solar Activity, which is very low.
Traditional ramp will eventually come, maybe tomorrow, maybe not in this cycle, who knows….
but that day is NOT yet today.
correction: 10:24 UT 09/01/2009
should read 05:03 UT 09/01/2009
Majority of these guys called for a large cycle 24 and are looking bad…
Only thing to do is to keep focusing on the magnetogram for a heads up and then squint at the visible disc with an itchy trigger finger. Try to redefine a sunspot now while everyone has forgotten what one looks like. Who knows what the count will be at solar max… 300… 500?
Hardly what would have occured 100 years ago dontcha think?
Almost forgot…
The warmers want a high count as well. If things chill but the count is high they can refute the sun’s corelation with climate and attribute the cooling trend to a decrease in co2 due to global recession… blah, blah, blah…
A zero sunspot month makes news and draws public attention to the solar/climate link… that by definition is bad and will make it more difficult for them to ‘save’ the planet.
Bob Shapiro (09:31:30) :
“As I look at this picture, it appears to have “sunlight” hitting it from the right, with a “shaded” region to the left. Now, how can a location ON the sun have a sunlit and a shaded region. Would somebody who understands this stuff please take another look?”
It’s your eye trying to make perspective out of incomplete information, Bob. The Sun is, for all intents and purposes, a black body emitter. When you look at the sun the total intensity reaching your eye (or a camera lens) from the center of the image is going to be stronger than the intensity reaching your eye from the limb, with a monotonic decrease in intensity from center to edge. If you look back at the first image of the whole sun at the beginning of this article you will see clearly that the center is brighter than the edges.
Now, if you mask of a section of the image similar to the section masked off in the image you referred to you will notice that the right side of the mask has a brighter sun and the left side of the mage has a darker sun. This is exactly the way an artist would shade an object if he wanted to use perspective to suggest an image with a light source to the right – so you brain in fact processes the image so that you can draw that conclusion.
Finally, the structure of the spot on the surface just happens to be aligned in such a way as to reinforce the impression that the sun’s image suggests a light source to the right with shadowing. But it’s all just your brain trying to impose information where that information in incomplete. The image is, after all, a 2-dimensional representation of a much more complex object.
Hope that helps.
Who can answer the question: How long will the 25th. solar cycle be?
There’s a spot there today all right though yesterday I think it was just a speck with a gleam in its eye. No matter, for all practical purposes it ties the recent times spotless record set last August. The sun is asleep all snug in its bed while visions of sunspots dance in its head.
According to the magnetogram, I’d say that it is a NEUTRAL sunspot !!!
The spot is not visible to me today. I looked at around 10am PDT, which is 17:00 UT.
The MDI Cont. of 2009 09 01 – 05:03 UT would be 10:03 pm last night my time.
Geoff Sharp (03:16:08) :
But what is your opinion of the latitude of 1025, is it closer to the equator than would be considered normal for this stage in the cycle?
17 North is not unusual for a new cycle spot. It would be more unusual for a lingering SC23 spot.
Robert Wood (03:51:41) :
I notice Leif’s daily TSI graph hasn’t been updated recently, although the other graphs have been.
SORCE had some data problems which have now been corrected [and my graph updated]
Peter Taylor (04:57:25) :
is it known at what latitude the Carrington event in 1859 occurred?
20 degrees North.
http://adsbit.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?bibcode=1859MNRAS..20…13C
Whe should catagorize sunspots in to: Small, Medium and large. Or small and big.
Never in the history of mankind have so many owed so much to so tiny a sunspot….
OK, let me see if this is right. Sunspot activity is related to solar output is related to temperature changes on earth. So, if Anthony mentioning lack of sunspots causes sunspots to appear… therefore we should be able to create a computer model that suggests that Anthony is the cause of global warming. Anthony Global Warming. Hey, thinner arguments are mainstream! 🙂 😛
Hans Verbeek (13:59:33) :
I figure it owes me.
Al that observing, digging and measuring stuff.
All those calculations and figures.
I should send the bill to Sol Enterprises, PO Box 1, Saggitarius, Milky Way.
Rep. Linda Sanchez: Global warming caused California wildfires
By Michelle Malkin • September 1, 2009 06:10 PM Yes, it was inevitable:
Rep. Linda Sanchez, the Democratic congresswoman from California’s 39th Congressional District, appeared on MSNBC’s Sept. 1 “Andrea Mitchell Reports” and did just that. She told the show’s fill-in host Tamron Hall that these wildfires have increased in “magnitude” over the years. And she knew why.
The fire is caused by the passivity of the conservatives. If we had tax by now, these fires could have been prevented.
I am glad we have congress people that know what causes fires before they are investigated.
For the weather nerd in you, I found this article looking at solar cycles and US winters…
http://www.examiner.com/x-17371-Raleigh-Climate-Examiner~y2009m8d18-What-the-Solar-Cycle-might-be-telling-us-about-Fall-and-Winter
How has the observatory fared? anyone know?
Re:
rbateman (12:40:46) :
The spot is not visible to me today. I looked at around 10am PDT, which is 17:00 UT.
The MDI Cont. of 2009 09 01 – 05:03 UT would be 10:03 pm last night my time.
How do you “look”?
Layman’s Sunspot Count updated for Aug. http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50
SOHO came through with the goods and we received decent pictures of 1025. As Robert has pointed out it was a fizzer and barely managed 11 pixels for a few hours.
SIDC publishes first month of ZERO sunspots this minimum and ignores previous specks counted by NOAA. Will the SIDC ignore 1025 and continue our spotless run?
I don’t know what I’m looking at without a map overlay. All I know is what I mentioned yesterday on this website: It’s bizarre to see Denver’s air this hazy – and I can smell the smoke of the fires from thousands of miles away. The sun has been orange for days, and going to Back-to-School Night last night it felt like Halloween: a great big, blood-red, three-quarter moon and one very scary World History teacher!
Perhaps Linda Sanchez has it backwards: Ca. fires are causing global warming. Isn’t heat a main product of fire?
By claiming eternal budget shortfalls, the excuse is ready-made to cut fire suppression (along with every other vital function). When the fires break out and nothing has been done for what Rep. Sanchez knows is going to happen, she blames the other party.
Far as I can tell, Sacramento has way too many politicians who cannot accept responsibiiity.
Don’t blame Global Warming for political ineptitude.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the Sun sneezed, rolled over to it’s other side in the hammock, and went back to sleep.