Amateur telescope photographer Thierry Legault has gained renown in recent years taking photographs of spacecraft in orbit… from the ground, with them either reflecting sunlight as they cross the terminator, or silhouetted by the moon, or in recent days, silhouetted by a near spotless sun.
His most recent accomplishment is this solar silhouette of the International Space Station docked with Space Shuttle Atlantis on its STS-132 mission. While many have marvelled at his accomplishment, we’ve heard less about the continuing near-spotless state of the sun in his photograph. This one sunspot region counted enough on May 22nd to make the daily sunspot count be 15!
It appears that the sunspot and 10.7 progression for Solar Cycle 24 have hit a bit of a roadblock in recent months, according to NOAA’s Solar Cycle Progression and Prediction Center.
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And based on this month’s figures to date at
http://space-env.esa.int/Data_Plots/noaa/ssn_plot.html,
June is going to about a low as April and May
I was rather shocked this morning when I noticed that the beautiful new spot in the southern hemisphere had not been numbered and that the spot count was zero!
Upon closer inspection I noticed an important clue as to why NOAA has ignored this one…
The polarity is reversed! SC 23/25 polarity!
Well, we all know that NOAA rarely numbers reverse polarity spots no matter how impressive they may be 😉
Again DA spot on, Hathaway and others LOL,,,wrong again and again and again…
Mr. Alex says:
June 27, 2010 at 4:52 am
“…..Upon closer inspection I noticed an important clue as to why NOAA has ignored this one…
The polarity is reversed! SC 23/25 polarity!….”
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I was right SC 24 has already peaked just as Dr. Hathaway predicted! OK, so he was off a little on the strength of cycle 24 but he is spot on about when the solar maximum would occur. /sarc
Dec. 21, 2006: Evidence is mounting: the next solar cycle is going to be a big one.
“Solar cycle 24, due to peak in 2010 or 2011 “looks like its going to be one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago,” says solar physicist David Hathaway of the Marshall Space Flight Center. He and colleague Robert Wilson presented this conclusion last week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco…..
According to their analysis, the next Solar Maximum should peak around 2010 with a sunspot number of 160 plus or minus 25. This would make it one of the strongest solar cycles of the past fifty years—which is to say, one of the strongest in recorded history.
. [More]
Their forecast is based on historical records of geomagnetic storms”
Joe Bastardi AccuWeather:
ANYONE SEE A SUNSPOT?
http://spaceweather.com/images2010/18jun10/midi512_blank.gif?PHPSESSID=1pq7lkth kmm2jgpge5siu2h1a3
But look what space weather does with sunspot number…
Sunspot number: 14
Now let’s go to my other site…
http://www.landscheidt.info/?q=node/50
Scroll down and see what is a spotless sun.
This is what I am talking about. NASA is beefing up numbers and not measuring in a way where we can use their method to compare to previous cycles. Rewrite and confuse the public. The old method, as they were using back in the last downtime, would never say there was a sunspot. They are picking out what they term a sunspot now.
It’s like hurricane activity in 1933 and 2005… if we had the data sources we have now, chances are we would have seen many more storms in areas we didn’t. So one has to understand that while we are advancing the way we look at things, we have to take it in context as far as whether the increase/decrease of these things is only because of the fact we can actually see them.
Ciao for now.
From http://www.accuweather.com/ukie/bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
That’s a mighty nice photo, that.
I love all things extra terrestrial and spacey….
If we went back in time and you’d told people like HG Wells or Edwin Hubble that we’d send men to the moon in 1969… They’d have said, “But of course!”… What they wouldn’t believe is…. That we never went back.
Instead, we spend ridiculous amounts of money on pseudoscience that advances politics instead of understanding.
Ah well. Maybe a new era dawns?
To Mr. Alex – Where do you find sunspot polarity data?
That new spot was numbered 1084 when I checked just now.
I’m sticking with this cycle resembling an elongated solar cycle 20.
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl20.gif
http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif
Ed Mertin
Sunman, IN
Show me the 10.7 and its roadblock.
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The sun and it’s spots behaved erratically during the Maunder Minimum. Off-On-Off-On — Probably means nothing, but it is not unheard of.
Going to be fun watching for next decades what really does happen. For once we have some instruments which may be able to unmask some secrets.
@ur momisugly Stephan:
Hathaway, with the exception of his first prediction several years ago, is full of it. All his subsequent “predictions” are junk. He should simply admit he hasn’t the foggiest idea what is happening with the sun and admit he doesn’t know. The hubris of the man is beyond comprehension.
This one sunspot region counted enough on May 22nd to make the daily sunspot count be 15!
The sunspot number is not just a simple count – look up Rudolf Wolf or “Wolf number” for more info on how it’s calculated.
Very cool picture to go along with a very quiet sun.
“This one sunspot region counted enough on May 22nd to make the daily sunspot count be 15!”
If they are able to alter the definition of a ‘single sunspot’ then they will be able to establish negative correlation between sunspots and global temperature.
If a count of one each day for a year in the past correlated to a cooling and a count of 15 each day in the past correlated to a warming then why does a count of 15 today correlate to a cooling?
The obvious answer will be that there is no correlation.
Someone needs to be using the same technology today as was used to create the historical record or else there will be no way to use the current data as an extension of the past without, some ‘adjustments’.
So who is using the historical method to measure sunspots?
It is a trap.
The reason why there can be a sunspot and a sunspot number of zero is that the sunspot number is calculated on the previous day while the image is from the present day. There is always a one day lag between the sunspot number and the image depicting it.
That can’t be right. Didn’t the models predict over 150 by now? Seems like some sort of “adjustment” is in order.
For a real eye-opener about the present lack of solar activity go to
http://journalofcosmology.com/ClimateChange111.html (Duhua and de Jager, The Forthcoming Grand Minimum of Solar Activity, Journal of Cosmology, June 2010, Vol 8, 1983-1999).
This paper is hot off the press. We aren’t entering a Dalton or Maunder Minima. We’re in the beginning of another “Little Ice Age”.
I wonder what this Sunspot Number Progression would look like if it were plotted as the sqrt(N/S areas) minus the sqrt(S/N areas) …
Get the impression that the “Little Red Line” is going to move ‘again’, say to peak in ’14 and not ’13? Things could explode and stay on track, but it just doesn’t seem likely; not with SC24’s track record.
NASA rewrites and confuses on sunspot counts:
http://www.accuweather.com/world-bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
If the polarity is reversed, is it SC23 or 25. Has this happened before?
Does anyone konw?
Leif on LeanGate, please. Weigh in or don’t.
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Mr. Alex says:
June 27, 2010 at 4:52 am
The polarity is reversed! SC 23/25 polarity!
3% of all spots [that is one in about 30] are reversed. This does not mean a SC23 spot [too high latitude for that], and not a Sc25, because that is too far away in time. So, nothing shocking, and NOAA does not the polarity as a reason to not count a spot. They probably didn’t see it [hard so near the limb] or it was not seen by more than one observer, or didn’t meet some of their other criteria [like visible for at least 12 hours].
They’ve given it a number, Mr Alex. It’s 1084, but no mention on the spaceweather.com (NASA site) about the polarity.
More (better) info can be found at http://www.landscheidt.info
or at
http://www.solarcycle24.com
Then again, you probably knew that already.
kim says:
June 27, 2010 at 9:51 am
LeanGate, please.
Judith Lean is a good friend of mine and a good scientist. That the IPCC didn’t involve more scientists on the solar issue is not a negative reflection on Judith. Perhaps it is more a reflection of how much [or how little] the IPCC believe the Sun is important. Lean’s analysis of this subject looks good to me: there is an influence, but it is small [barely detectable – otherwise we would not be discussing it]. The IPCC also did not compose a large team to evaluate the influence of Ceres or Pluto on the Earth…