I have been busy all day with solar imaging and emailing across the globe. I awoke this morning to suspicious spots on the solar surface. I emailed Dr Tony Phillips about the spots and have now sent images off to him for confirmation. He will need to check the magnetogram for reverse polarity of the spots. At this stage the spots are bright plage, but close ups show flaring and magnetic field lines. Very very exciting to maybe witness the start of a new solar cycle.
The 60mm certainly works nicely.
The first image is of sol's disk and the question marks are the spots in question. The solar equator is indicated from east to west along that line. The active region in the centre is old cycle activity as well as the spot just above it.
The second image is of the lower limb and a possible cycle 24 spot forming.
The last image is of the upper left limb where another spot of possible cycle 24 origin.
For those that do not know, cycle 23 and cycle 24 spots can and do exist on the solar surface until solar minimum is reach. We are currently heading into solar minimum and as soon as the new cycle spots appear it will be roughly 13 months until solar minimum.
Ahhh, ok, when the cycle is ending all spots are formed near the equator. In fact spots start near 25 degrees N or S and as the years roll past solar minimum, they start to form more towards the equator. So by the time solar minmum comes they are all forming at or very near the equator. If you look at a sunspot butterfly diagram you will notice that during minimum old cycle spots form in that very way and at the same time new spots for the next cycle start forming in high latitudes. However the only real way to determine whether a spot is old cycle or new cycle you need to look at a magnetogram to see the magnetic polarity of the spot. SOHO has magnetograms on a daily basis. Old spots have spots being north south in orientation (I think) whereas the new spots will be the reverse in polarity as the cycle shift magnetic field every 11 years.
"Throughout the solar_cycle, the latitude of sunspot occurrence varies with an interesting pattern. The [attached thumbnail] shows the latitude of sunspot occurence versus time (in years). Sunspots are typically confined to an equatorial belt between -35 degrees south and +35 degrees north latitude. At the beginning of a new solar cycle, sunspots tend to form at high latitudes, but as the cycle reaches a maximum (large numbers of sunspots) the spots form at lower latitudes. Near the minimum of the cycle, sunspots appear even closer to the equator, and as a new cycle starts again, sunspots again appear at high latitudes. This recurrent behavior of sunspots gives rise to the "butterfly'' pattern shown, and was first discovered by Edward Maunder in 1904. The reason for this sunspot migration pattern is unknown. Understanding this pattern could tell us something about how the Sun's internal magnetic field is generated."
From what I understand, the first glimpse of cycle 24 was detected at the end of July 2006. Maybe the recent activity is the 'rise of cycle 24' which Ulrich mentioned?
In any case, it'll be nice to see an increase in sunspot activity again.. cycle 23 sure had some doozies.
Lyra, this was later proven not to be the case. That spot only lasted a few hours and it was not night enough up in latitude, nor was it reversed in polarity. It was from memory around 14 degrees. The first actual spots still have to arrive. The active regions I spotted the other day and the subject of this thread have faded in a 24 hour period and the magnetogram showed they were from cycle 23. So we still wait for the first spots which typically last for 4-7 days. We could of course be heading into something akin to the Maunder minimum. Now that would be very bad.
As Mike posted the Maunder minimum is the most striking example when solar activity slowed right down. There have been several instances where this has occurred in recorded history. If this happens it is like that the world will go into a cooling trend too. The Maunder minimum caused a mini ice age in Europe during that time. Nothing is certain of course and only mere speculation, but it is not the first time it has happened.
In terms of the butterfly diagram it cannot be assured that activity will tend to increase. In fact looking at sunspot numbers (ggogle sunspots and go to wikipedia) over the last century there seems to be a pattern of climbing numbers and activity until the 1958 maximum and since then it has been steadily dropping. It is entirely possible that there is a pattern to this part of the cycle too (speculation on my behalf) and so there are patterns within patterns of the solar activity. The trouble is that we are still in the infancy of understanding how a star really works and as yet cannot predict when a cycle will start or when it will end nor if it is all just part of a larger cycle. Given the time spans involved with the sun, we just don't have enough information to make a reliable timeline of its activity.
This article came up on a Google search ("cycle 24 sunspots") and seems to validate the 2006 sighting I linked to, but also seems hesitant to name it as the start of cycle 24.
Is it common to have these false alarms at the beginning of every cycle, and how will we know *for sure* that the cycle has 'officially' begun?
Yeah that article seemed quite positive, the spot met the magnetogram part, but it was not high enough up in latitude. I think Tony Phillips of Space weather and NASA is now saying that we are yet to see new spots of the new cycle.
Yeah false alarms do seem to be the flavour of the day at present. Just want to see it get started.
There's an amazing thing called Google .. you just type in what you want to read about and lots of great stuff comes up
yep i could probably find out everything, all the latest high tech information elsewhere, the best shots are probably elsewhere on nasa pic of the day for example, i could download all the technical specs for equipment i am interested in no need to ask an opinion........i dont know why i bother.
