Leif Svalgaard (via Frank Hill) writes to advise me that National Solar Observatory GONG is showing a significant spot on the far side of the sun that appear to have the right latitude for SC24 in addition to being fairly large.
Here is the GONG plot, note P87.
The stereo behind shows some activity also:
Meanwhile on the earthside, it appears that two tiny SC23 specks are showing. Though, they are very hard to see in this SOHO MDI image
We’ll know soon what the spot coming around looks like and if it has the right polarity or is another one of those seemingly neutral polarity spots we’ve seen over the past few months..
Oh – I meant to include a note that I was really impressed with the advent of helioseismology and its growth into imaging farside sunspots. Cool science, and I’m pleased that Frank Hill from GONG has taken note of this thread.
And that’s not tongue-in-cheek!
Ric Werme (06:07:28) :
Oh – I meant to include a note that I was really impressed with the advent of helioseismology and its growth into imaging farside sunspots. Cool science, and I’m pleased that Frank Hill from GONG has taken note of this thread.
And that’s not tongue-in-cheek!
Hill and Howe are on the leading edge in my view…I know its not easy, but it would be great if we had up to date Doppler views of the current torsional oscillation.
Geoff Sharp (06:01:01) :
I wouldn’t be so confident….we are in waters that you have never transversed. You have stated the minimum was Aug 2008?
The Sun has been there; it doesn’t matter that I haven’t. And Aug 2008 was not that far off depending on how minimum is defined. If you say that we are in SC23 when SC23 spots outnumber SC24 spots, and we are in SC24 when SC24 spots outnumber SC23 spots, and that minimum is the time of transition between the two cycles, then August 2008 was right on: http://www.leif.org/research/Region%20Days%20per%20Month%20for%2023-24.png
Each measure has its own minimum and they vary with up to a year between them, especially when the transition is as flat as the current one.
“Richard deSousa (14:52:15) :
Nah… it’s going to be a plage.”
Which reminds me, a couple of months ago two fabulously large areas of activity appeared on the behind images and the celebrations were indeed beginning, but then the two areas appeared on Earthside and they were both “corpses”, only one of them later resulted in a shattered microtims! This is nothing new…
“Geoff Sharp (06:01:01) :
You have stated the minimum was Aug 2008?”
The candidate month of minimum is no earlier than December 2008 according to consensus(!). And without these tiny tims, it is in fact still going.
Doesn’t Leif also believe that SC 22 month of sunspot minimum was in October 1996 not may 1996?
In any case, at this point in time it appears that SC 24 MAXIMUM was in November 2008 or July 2009! 😉
Although the farside image for today shows a lower prob. (70 vs. 87) STEREO B still shows a robust region
http://www.leif.org/research/1026.png
The images are from 14, 15, 16 Sept.
Leif,
Take a look at the planetary alignment for 19th/20th. Could this lone spot be due to Mercury passing through on the inside track of the approx Saturn-Sun-Eath-Uranus alignment? Most significant CME/SP events seem to occur near approx transits, double transits or oppositions. The classics are the Carrington event (1st Sept 1859) and Bastille day (24th Aug 1998). Maybe this spot is the result of a similar effect of an otherwise quiet sun. Just a thought without much foundation, what’s your take on this?
That Uccle [Belgium] astronomer has a cycle 23 spot on her laptop screen!
http://sidc.oma.be/images/last_ORBdrawing.jpg
Aligner (07:03:13) :
Take a look at the planetary alignment for 19th/20th. […] Just a thought without much foundation, what’s your take on this?
There are many alignments without spots or flares. People have been looking into this for 150 years and there is general agreement that no credible causality has been established. Here is an account of the historical development http://www.leif.org/research/Rise-and-Fall.pdf
On the other hand, the idea refuses to die as it has a certain appeal to simplicity and predictability in contrast to the messiness of the real Sun, so will always find acolytes. There will always be people ‘in the know’, no matter what the subject is. Modern science has become [simply because we know so much] largely impenetrable to the general public and there is great yearning for simpler [and simplistic] notions.
Leif,
Bastille day was of course 14th Jul 2000. But no matter it and 24th August are both examples of the same thing. Sorry for the confusion.
Aligner (07:03:13) :
That shows the opposition between the phantoms’ universe and the real one. Between the three dimension universe vs. the n-dimensions universe, that of super-chords, black matter, and other scaring things.
Leif Svalgaard (06:37:07) :
The consensus is that minimum is way past Aug 2008….admit it and move on.
Mr. Alex (06:45:41) :
Doesn’t Leif also believe that SC 22 month of sunspot minimum was in October 1996 not may 1996?
If you look at http://www.leif.org/research/Active-Region-Count.png you can argue that minimum was in May 1996 according to smoothed SSN, or October 1996 according to the sharp dip in the red curve down to very low values, or in January 1997 according to the cross-over between cycle dominance, or in March 1996 according to F10.7 http://www.leif.org/research/F107-1993-1999.png , or in January 1996 according to the minimum ’tilt’ of the heliographic current sheet, or in ….
The point is that there is no single definition of minimum and squabbling over ‘exactly’ which month [or hour!] it was, doesn’t make much sense, except, of course, as a great means to sow uncertainty and cast doubt about credibility: [“but you said minimum was ….”]
Nogw (07:19:52) :
That Uccle [Belgium] astronomer has a cycle 23 spot on her laptop screen!
http://sidc.oma.be/images/last_ORBdrawing.jpg
No, it is just that the image is mirrored because of the projection. That speck does indeed coincide with the SOHO speck.
Geoff Sharp (07:45:57) :
The consensus is that minimum is way past Aug 2008….admit it and move on.
The consensus operates with a +/- six month window.
It seems that what I just posted is already coming to pass: “The point is that there is no single definition of minimum and squabbling over ‘exactly’ which month [or hour!] it was, doesn’t make much sense, except, of course, as a great means to sow uncertainty and cast doubt about credibility: [“but you said minimum was ….”]”
Accept and admit that the minimum depends on the criterion, and move on.
REPLY: What the world needs, is a better solar specktrometer. – Anthony
Ahh… didn’t know the host liked his puns. Encouragement!
In response geoff pohanka
I would like the sun to ramp up a bit… I am all for a bit of warming. I live right smack on the 45th parallel. This means two things. 1) Most of the continent is North of me 2) I am freezing. We had 6 full months with temperature average far below freezing in the last year, and nearly no summer for the second year running. To us warmer means better growing season, more rain, less money spent on heating, the list goes on and on.
Perhaps a little more on this? Or a direct answer to George Smith’s question: How do they see spots on the farside?
Leif,
Thank you for the link to that paper, excellent.
[i]Modern science has become [simply because we know so much] largely impenetrable to the general public and there is great yearning for simpler [and simplistic] notions.[/i]
I completely agree. Maybe CO2 based AGW is part of the same yearning.
Note: Square brackets don’t work here. For HTML use arrows: . ~dbs, mod.
Bill P (08:24:07) :
Perhaps a little more on this? Or a direct answer to George Smith’s question: How do they see spots on the farside?
The roiling and vigorous movements in the Sun create sound waves that [like seismic waves] propagate through the entire Sun. A big sunspot’s magnetic field changes the speed of sound in and around it, thus changes the time it takes for sound waves to reach the front side, where we observe the waves as oscillations. We are basically observing [or deducing] the variation of the speed of sound inside the Sun, and can thus tell if there is something [like a spot] changing it.
“PS: Hey! theories are for free these days! just a small untested theory I have!”
Apparently that all that is needed these days – no proof, data, or observations, straight from theory to fact. The press releases even say so! It frees up so much grant capital for lifestyle pursuits…
“REPLY: What the world needs, is a better solar specktrometer. – Anthony”
Respeckfully, that introspecktion is purely speckulative. Can we exspeck to see one in the Weather Shop soon? 🙂
Maybe sunspot threads can be titled “Solar Speckulation, Part (x=x+1)”
Leif Svalgaard (07:02:36) :
That is not how the Sun is behaving these days, Leif.
Cheerleading the region will do nothing for it.
It either survives the tendency to wither going from the BEHIND to the Earth LOS or it does not.
The region to the north of it didn’t fare so well.
Not much does, therefore the odds are not good.
There evolution of the farside maps can be found here:
http://vso.tuc.noao.edu/GONG/farside/
Email from Frank Hill:
The gray image is an average of two 24-hour maps, the orange image is a single twelve-hour map. The gray one has a reduced noise level, and only phase shifts that are present in the same location for 48 hours survive. Those that survive are deemed to be likely real active regions rather than noise. A probability level is assigned based on the strength of the phase shift and the persistence of the signal. We have set up a beta site with the gray images, but the original site has only the orange ones.
—-
Irene is has developed this new method. Here is an Email from her:
Irene Gonzalez-Hernandez to Frank, Hugh, leif
There is no “manual” editing at all in the process.
The software to create the “grey” (calibrated) images has been implemented to average two daily non-overlapping images, then check for local minimums above a particular strength and finally the strength is compare to statistics that we have created for the success rate. If the probability for that particular signature is above 70%, the local minimum is highlighted as a candidate (in red circle). The statistics have not been published yet (although they are on their way). The averaging of two consecutive maps makes all the short term noise (solar or otherwise) go away.
I talked to the space weather forecasters some time ago and they were happy to lose temporal resolution if that meant to increase the reliability of the maps.
—-
This is all exciting stuff. Science in the making.
Leif:
As I recall, NASA’s helioseismology article,
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17jun_jetstream.htm
which was posted here awhile back, elicited a few scornfull comments. (Don’t remember why) I’m assuming this “ear to the sun” technology is the same to which you refer?