What Solar Activity?

Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 09:50 AM by Dave

The Sun has gone through its up and down 11 year cycle of sunspots. We are now at a minimum in the cycle. If you have noticed in the lower right hand column, the image of the Sun is blank, no sunspots. This trend is expected to continue this entire year.

Late 2007, or early 2008, is expected to start the up cycle in which the number of sunspots will increase. This next cycle is expected to have 30 to 50% more sunspots than average, triggering greater solar activity and solar storms.

Sunspots are areas of concentrated magnetic fields on the surface of the Sun. These magnetic fields prevent the normal upwelling of hot gases to the surface, so the surface above these magnetic fields is cooler, appearing darker … a sunspot. The magnetic fields act as a cork in a bottle, when the field shifts, vast amounts of energy can burst forth giving us a solar flare. Solar flares and their big brothers, coronal mass ejections, send out massive number of charged particles into space. This outpouring of particles creates what some scientists call Space Weather (For example, check out http://spaceweather.com/).

Massive solar flares and coronal mass ejections (a.k.a. magnetic storms) can result in beautiful auroras (a.k.a. nothern lights) in our skies. More importantly, they can also damage our communication satellites, power grids, and unprotected astronauts in space. Because of this solar scientists are very concerned about this upcoming solar cycle and the prediction for above average solar activity.  They’ll be keeping a watchful eye on the Sun for the next 11 years.

Posted in Astronomy News

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