Tag Archives: Solar Cycle

Active Region 2781

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Drawing Active Region 2781 Well, finally I got to see Active Region 2781 !! This active region is an enormous sunspot island of activity. AR 2718 is making its way across the Earth-facing surface of the sun. The last few years have given us crumbs in sunspot regions. However, the suns new eleven-year solar cycle has begun. We can look forward to more action in the future. This active region is over 100,000 km long. I was pleased to be lucky enough to have the time and a sunshine morning to capture it. These are somewhat complex drawings to do. Sometimes my pastel blows off the page before I get to fix it. I also have to try to balance the focus and the bandwidth every few minutes to enable clarity. Or at least the best achievable clarity. That morning the seeing wasn’t the best. The edge of the solar disc was wobbling like the heat haze you sometimes see … Continue reading →

Does an Increase in Solar Output Cause the Earth to Warm?

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Dean Pesnell, Project Scientist of the Solar Dynamics Observatory was asked whether SDO measures the total output of the Sun and whether an increase in that output could be causing the temperature of the Earth to increase? SDO was built to study how the magnetic fields of the Sun are created and destroyed. AIA and EVE look at wavelengths of light that tell us a lot about those magnetic fields but are absorbed by our atmosphere and can’t be measured at the surface. HMI is designed to measure the velocity and magnetic field at the surface, not the total output of the Sun. Other satellites in NASA’s fleet do measure the total output of the Sun, which we call the Total Solar Irradiance or TSI. One instrument on SOHO called VIRGO has measured TSI since 1996. Another instrument is TIM on NASA’s SORCE that is operated by the same group that built EVE. SORCE was very carefully calibrated and used to … Continue reading →

New Dual Dynamo Solar Model Predicts Maunder Minimum for Cycle 26

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A new model of the Sun’s solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun’s 11-year heartbeat. The model draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone. Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the ‘mini ice age’ that began in 1645.  Results will be presented today by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno. It is 172 years since a scientist first spotted that the Sun’s activity varies over a cycle lasting around 10 to 12 years. But every cycle is a little different and none of the models of causes to date have fully explained fluctuations.  Many solar physicists have put the cause of the solar cycle down to a dynamo caused by convecting fluid deep within the Sun.  Now, Zharkova and her … Continue reading →