Solar Cycle Progression

[EarthlingX]

spaceweather.com : COMPLEX ERUPTION ON THE SUN:

On August 1st around 0855 UT, Earth orbiting satellites detected a C3-class solar flare. The origin of the blast was sunspot 1092. At about the same time, an enormous magnetic filament stretching across the sun's northern hemisphere erupted. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory recorded the action:

Click to launch a movie (EUV 304 Å)

The timing of these events suggest they are connected, and a review of SDO movies strengthens that conclusion. Despite the ~400,000 km distance between them, the sunspot and filament seem to erupt together; they are probably connected by long-range magnetic fields. In this movie (171 Å), a shadowy shock wave (a "solar tsunami") can be seen emerging from the flare site and rippling across the northern hemisphere into the filament's eruption zone. That may have helped propel the filament into space.

A coronal mass ejection (CME) produced by the event is heading directly for Earth: SOHO movie. High-latitude sky watchers should be alert for auroras when it arrives on or about August 3rd.

more images:

..

Sunspot 1092, a key player in yesterday's Earth-directed eruptions, is big enough to see without the aid of a solar telescope. Oleg Toumilovitch "spotted" it on July 31st rising over Blairgowrie, South Africa:

Photo details: Canon EOS-350D, ISO-800, 1/1600s exposure

 

[origin]

Wow it looks like a good night to see the aurora! The Kp-indec is at 5 which is associated with storm-level geomagnetic activity.

Unfortunatley the humidity is so high here I may not be able to see the moon tonight let alone the aurora...

edited add, ooh the Kp index is up to 6 now.

 

[MeteorWayne]

Yes, widespread mid latitude aurora were reported. Totally overcast here

 

[origin]

Yes, widespread mid latitude aurora were reported. Totally overcast here

I was out about midnight and it was perfectly clear but the humidity was so high I could just barely make out polaris - generally in my neck of the woods I can make out the whole little dipper pretty easily. The best I could see was a diffuse light to the north and I am not sure if it wasn't just lights from a town. It looks like the sun is still 'acting up' so maybe tonight will be good....

 

[MeteorWayne]

Yeah, those hazy humid "clear" summer nights wreak havoc with astronomy. Makes it rare to have a really good night for the Perseid peak.

From Spaceweather.com:

http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?vie ... &year=2010

"NORTHERN LIGHTS: A coronal mass ejection (CME) hit Earth's magnetic field on August 3rd at 1740 UT. The impact sparked a G2-class geomagnetic storm that lasted nearly 12 hours--time enough for auroras to spread all the way from Europe to North America."

 

[EarthlingX]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NfHTEQvmbM[/youtube]

thesuntoday | August 08, 2010

http://www.thesuntoday.org - Here is a 2 week view of the sun as observed by the AIA (Atmospheric Imaging Assembly) instrument aboard the SDO (Solar Dynamics Observatory) spacecraft. This video contains 4 wavelength channels, 304, 171, 193 and 211. First all four wavelengths are shown simultaneously then each one separately. It has been a fairly busy 2 weeks even though the solar activity is not high. The first period of note is August 1 with 2 filament eruptions, a C flare, EUV wave and 2 CMEs. The first CME from the active region produced Aurora. The second is on August 7 when a M-class flare, EUV wave and CME occurred. In addition to these 2 times there is always something happening if you look around the sun. Because of some data and formatting problems, there is no data on July 30 and 31 and the intensity scaling on August 1 is different than the rest of the 2 weeks. (credit: sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov)

 

[EarthlingX]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvAA23G3B-I[/youtube]

thesuntoday | August 25, 2010

http://www.thesuntoday.org - Spicules pop up from the Sun constantly. These dynamics jets are smaller features of the Sun that are commonly ignored. However, with the detailed close-up that SDO can provide, we can see these much more clearly than ever before. Over a few hours observation of the northern pole area of the Sun in extreme ultraviolet light (Aug. 3, 2010), we can see a continual frenzy of these features. At any one time there are around 60,000 to 70,000 active spicules on the Sun; an individual spicule typically reaches 3,000-10,000 km altitude above the photosphere. A couple of them rise up ten to 20 higher than most of the others. Spicules are an integral part of the dynamic nature of the Sun. (credit: SDO/GSFC and Dr. Steele Hill from http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/gallery/main.php?v=item&id=27)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKGufXvLXuc[/youtube]

thesuntoday | August 26, 2010
http://www.thesuntoday.org - An extensive coronal hole dominated the solar landscape this week as seen in extreme ultraviolet light by SDO's (Aug. 23-25, 2010). The dark coronal hole reached more than halfway across the Sun and changed very little over these three days. Coronal holes are magnetically open areas from which high-speed solar wind streams out into space. They appear darker in this wavelength because there is just less of the material that is being imaged, in this case ionized iron. Since the hole has facing towards Earth, we have been getting some nice auroras from the more concentrated impact of the solar wind.

 

[EarthlingX]

A Spitfire Sun
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYO9xKwqlO0[/youtube]

thesuntoday | September 03, 2010

As an active area rotated into view, SDO caught numerous, small bursts of plasma as the region sputtered and spewed during about a two--day period (Aug. 29-31, 2010). The region is not technically a sunspot region or active region (AR) as there are no sunspots visible in white light. But there is a strong concentration of magnetic field on in the solar photosphere and this is observed as the bright patch we see in the extreme ultraviolet. The bursts are a direct result of the intense magnetic interactions in this area. The images were taken in the 304 Angstrom wavelength of extreme ultraviolet light that shows material at about 60,000 Kelvin. (credit: Dr. Steele Hill and SDO)

Three Rotations in Three Temperatures
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80okqFAY2po[/youtube]

SDOmission2009 | September 03, 2010

Solar images in three different wavelengths in extreme ultraviolet light are combined together to show solar activity over almost three months (June 2 -- Aug. 26, 2010). Each wavelength is shown in a different color. The wavelengths are at 211 (red - 2 million degrees), 193 (green - 1.3 million degrees), and 171 Angstroms (blue - 600,000 degrees). The cadence is basically a frame every 45 minutes. The brightest areas are active regions, which have stronger magnetic field than the surrounding area.

A couple of Sun related news :

SDC : New Telescope Takes Best Sunspot Photo Ever

By Clara Moskowitz
SPACE.com Senior Writer
posted: 03 September 2010
04:13 pm ET



A new photo of a sunspot on the surface of the sun taken by a telescope in California is the most detailed seen in visible light, scientists say.

The sunspot snapshot was obtained by the New Solar Telescope at the Big Bear Solar Observatory in Big Bear Lake, Calif., operated by the New Jersey Institute of Technology.

SDC : NASA Aims to Plunge Car-Sized Probe Into the Sun

By SPACE.com Staff

posted: 02 September 2010
06:49 pm ET



NASA is developing an ambitious new mission to plunge a car-sized probe directly into the sun's atmosphere, boldly going where no spacecraft has gone before.

The spacecraft, called Solar Probe Plus, is slated to launch no later than 2018, NASA announced Thursday.

The space agency has picked the five science experiments to ride aboard the new sun-exploring spacecraft. The instruments include a solar wind particle detector, a 3-D camera, and a device to measure the sun's magnetic field, among other tools.

Closest-Ever Probe of Sun is New NASA Mission
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLJvG1K1N9M[/youtube]

NASAtelevision | September 03, 2010

Solar Probe Plus, a new NASA mission to visit and study the sun closer than ever before, is officially underway. The spacecraft will plunge directly into the sun's atmosphere at approximately 4 million miles from the surface into a region no
other spacecraft has ever encountered.

SDC thread : Solar Probe +

 

[kk434]

We have only studied the solar cycle for 300 years, who knows if the 11 year cycle is not just a short term phenomenon and on longer scales(100.000 years) the sun behaves comepletally different.

 

[BurgerB75]

Is there any way to measure solar activity from ice core samples? That might be one way to look back in time I guess.

 

[kk434]

I think you only get temperature data from ice cores, seen plenty of those but no one that showes solar cycles.

 

[BurgerB75]

Nuts.

 

[EarthlingX]

www.physorg.com : Image: C3-class solar flare erupts on Sept. 8, 2010 (and video)

September 10, 2010


This is a snapshot of the prominence. Credit: NASA/SDO

Just as sunspot 1105 was turning away from Earth on Sept. 8, the active region erupted, producing a solar flare and a fantastic prominence. The eruption also hurled a bright coronal mass ejection into space. The eruption was not directed toward any planets.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7yxNoZsecc[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YtdWO4NiPo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkIVU2Cbn58[/youtube]

 

[EarthlingX]

www.physorg.com : Sunspots could soon disappear for decades: study

September 15, 2010 by Lin Edwards


Photo Credit: NASA/TRACE

(PhysOrg.com) -- Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades. The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age.

Penn and Livingston examined 1500 sunspots and found that the average strength of the magnetic field of the sunspots has dropped from around 2700 gauss to 2000 gauss. (In comparison, the Earth’s magnetic field is below one gauss.) The reasons for the decline are unknown, but Livingston said that if the strength continues to decrease at the same rate it will drop to 1500 gauss by 2016, and below this strength the formation of sunspots appears to be impossible.

David Hathaway, a solar physicist with the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, also cautioned the calculations do not take into account that many small sunspots with relatively weak magnetic fields appeared during the last solar maximum, and if these are not included in the calculations the average magnetic field strength would seem higher than it actually was.

More information: Long-term Evolution of Sunspot Magnetic Fields, Matthew Penn and William Livingston, arXiv:1009.0784v1 [astro-ph.SR]

 

[EarthlingX]

I was alerted by :

elakdawalla @mars_stu was watching SDO, spotted a massive solar flare appear http://twitpic.com/2onafe then disappear http://twitpic.com/2onk10

and since i missed a couple of other sun shows, checked this one, and made a video :
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHkb1Z1F3KA[/youtube]

 

[MeteorWayne]

I'm on duty at the NJAA Sunday afternoon; looks like we might have someting good to show the public!

 

[EarthlingX]

A lot of very pretty pictures, videos and explanations :

sci.esa.int : A change of pace for EIT, the ground-breaking Sun-watching camera

21 Sep 2010
For almost 15 years, the EIT camera on board SOHO transmitted a picture of the solar corona every 12 minutes, providing ground-breaking observations of the Sun that changed our perception and understanding of our star. After a remarkable career, this instrument has now eased into semi-retirement. Although no longer as active as during its heyday, EIT will still provide snapshots of the Sun - at a more leisurely pace.

SOHO's EIT camera has captured the changing face of the Sun for almost 15 years. (Left) The Sun today and (right) in September 1999 - seen through the EIT 304 Å filter. Credit: ESA/NASA - SOHO/EIT

...

Travelling waves in the Sun's corona. Credit: ESA/NASA - SOHO/EIT

...

The key feature of EIT is its ability to follow the temporal evolution of solar events: this unprecedented 'cinematography' of the Sun allowed solar physicists to tackle its phenomena from a global perspective. "It might sound subtle, but there is a substantial difference between a sitting eagle and a flying one," says Fleck. "You have to see an eagle fly to understand what an eagle is. This is exactly how we felt when we first watched the amazing footage collected by EIT."

SOHO's EIT has monitored the Sun over a complete solar cycle (left) and captured the eruption of Coronal Mass Ejections, the latter are important in the context of space weather (right). Credit: ESA/NASA - SOHO/EIT

...

EIT has also captured the imagination of the general public and shaped the way many people see the star that provides us with light and heat. Its pictures have been featured in countless articles and EIT movies have been downloaded millions of times from the SOHO website.

"EIT has certainly done much more than we expected," says Auchère. "It has monitored the Sun over an entire, 11-year solar cycle, and has even witnessed a period of unusually intense activity in October 2003," he adds. Now time has come for retirement. Or, better, only a semi-retirement. "EIT is still up and running, and keeps taking, every day, two of the snapshots that made it so famous," Fleck concludes.

..

 

[MeteorWayne]

From the link above, the reason why:

EIT’s observations have strongly influenced the evolution of solar physics, paving the way for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), launched in early 2010. Thanks to substantial improvements in technology, the AIA instrument on board SDO is able to monitor the Sun at much higher cadence and much greater resolution than SOHO's EIT. After a few months of joint operations to cross-calibrate the instruments, it was time for EIT to pass the baton to its successor. Since 1 August 2010, EIT has reverted back to its original observing mode, taking images of the Sun only twice per day.

"EIT has been hugely successful, producing a wealth of results which could not have been achieved without it," says Frédéric Auchère from the Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale in Orsay, France, the current EIT Principal Investigator. "Originally intended only as a support instrument, it turned out to be one of the most productive aboard SOHO: a winning underdog," he adds.

In fact, over 400 refereed publications and doctoral theses arose from data gathered by EIT alone, leading to a vast number of 'first' discoveries. "It was the first instrument to routinely provide daily images of the Sun's lower corona, thus allowing us to identify large-scale coronal structures and study their evolution," says Daniel Müller, ESA's Deputy Project Scientist for SOHO.

More about the instrument:

The Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT) images the Sun's corona in four extreme-ultraviolet (EUV) filters, centred at wavelengths of 171, 195, 284 and 304 Ångström, respectively. The first three filters probe radiation emitted by highly ionised atoms of iron, corresponding to temperatures in the range 1-2 million Kelvin, whereas the last one is sensitive to light emitted by ionised helium, corresponding to significantly lower temperatures (60,000-80,000 Kelvin).

 

[EarthlingX]

spacefellowship.com : Solar Storms can Change Directions, Surprising Forecasters

Published by Matt

on Wed Sep 22, 2010 2:04 pm

via: NASA Science


A coronal mass ejection (CME) observed by STEREO on Dec. 12, 2008. Credit: NASA

So say researchers who have been using data from NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft to unravel the 3D structure of solar storms.

“This really surprised us,” says co-author Peter Gallagher of Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. “Solar coronal mass ejections (CMEs) can start out going one way—and then turn in a different direction.”

The result was so strange, at first they thought they’d done something wrong. After double- and triple-checking their work on dozens of eruptions, however, the team knew they were onto something.

“Our 3D visualizations clearly show that solar storms can be deflected from high solar latitudes and end up hitting planets they might otherwise have missed,” says lead author Jason Byrne, a graduate student at the Trinity Center for High Performance Computing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2xlacDFzbg[/youtube]

The key to their analysis was an innovative computing technique called “multiscale image processing.” Gallagher explains:

“‘Multiscale processing’ means taking an image and sorting the things in it according to size. Suppose you’re interested in race cars. If you have a photo that contains a bowl of fruit, a person, and a dragster, you could use multiscale processing to single out the race car and study its characteristics.”

In medical research, multiscale processing has been used to identify individual nuclei in crowded pictures of cells. In astronomy, it comes in handy for picking galaxies out of a busy star field. Gallagher and colleagues are the first to refine and use it in the realm of solar physics.

“We applied the multiscale technique to coronagraph data from NASA’s twin STEREO spacecraft,” Gallagher continues. “Our computer was able to look at starry images cluttered with streamers and bright knots of solar wind and zero in on the CMEs.”

...

One of the first things they noticed was how CMEs trying to go “up”—out of the plane of the solar system and away from the planets—are turned back down again. Gallagher confesses that they had to “crack the books” and spend some time at the white board to fully understand the phenomenon. In the end, the explanation was simple:

The sun’s global magnetic field, which is shaped like a bar magnet, guides the wayward CMEs back toward the sun’s equator. When the clouds reach low latitudes, they get caught up in the solar wind and head out toward the planets—”like a cork bobbing along a river,” says Gallagher.

Once a CME is embedded in the solar wind, it can experience significant acceleration. “This is a result of aerodynamic drag,” says Byrne. “If the wind is blowing fast enough, it drags the CME along with it—something we actually observed in the STEREO data.”

Past studies from other missions had revealed tantalizing hints of this CME-redirection and acceleration process, but STEREO is the first to see it unfold from nearly beginning to end.

...

 

[EarthlingX]

http://www.eso.org : A Solargraph taken from APEX at Chajnantor

This unusual and artistic image, made using a technique known as "solargraphy" in which a pinhole camera captures the movement of the Sun in the sky over many months, was taken from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope on the plateau of Chajnantor. The plateau is also where ESO, together with international partners, is building the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). The solar trails in the image were recorded over half a year and clearly show the quality of the 5000-metre altitude site, high in the Chilean Andes, for astronomical observations.

The idea for creating the solargraphs at ESO's telescopes came from Bob Fosbury, an astronomer based at ESO Headquarters in Germany, after learning about the technique from Finnish artist Tarja Trygg. Trygg provided the cameras, known as "cans". The cans are constructed from small black plastic canisters used for storing 35 mm film cassettes. A pinhole in a sheet of aluminium foil is placed over a small aperture drilled into the side of the can, and a rectangle of black and white photographic printing paper is curled and placed snugly around the inside of the can.

...
...

Credit:

ESO/R. Fosbury/T. Trygg/D. Rabanus

 

[EarthlingX]

www.universetoday.com : Solar Dynamics Observatory Earns its Stripes

Sep 28th, 2010

by Nancy Atkinson


Is this a new object in space that is half Sun and half Jupiter? Sunpiter? Credit: NASA/SDO

“Now we know what it would look like if Jupiter and the sun had a child,” joked Ralph Seguin of the Lockheed-Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab, trying to explain this weird image. So, just what is it? Some people have been calling it “Sunpiter,” since parts of it looks like the Sun, and other parts look like Jupiter. It really is the Sun, as seen by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, which was having a tough day. Normally, SDO gets a great view of the Sun, but the spacecraft occasionally gets its view blocked by the Earth, in a unusual kind of eclipse. This image is a composite of multiwavelength images and a magnetogram taken by SDO just as the sun was emerging from its daily blackout. “SDO has entered eclipse season,” said Seguin. “Around the time of the equinoxes, the spacecraft, Earth, and sun can line up almost perfectly. Once a day for about an hour, Earth blocks SDO’s view of the sun.” And this is the result.

..

Links in the article.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4QNHb4TPko[/youtube]

LittleSDOHMI | September 28, 2010

SDO has entered eclipse season. Around the time of the equinoxes, the spacecraft, Earth, and sun can line up almost perfectly. Once a day for about an hour, Earth blocks SDO's view of the sun. This is what it looks like in one of the extreme ultraviolet wavelengths. Eclipse season will be over on October 6, 2010.

Credit: NASA SDO / Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company

 

[EarthlingX]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cneQyjQNK8[/youtube]

thesuntoday | September 30, 2010

http://www.thesuntoday.org - Around 22:00 UT on the last day of September 2010 a large prominence erupted on the northwest limb (upper right) of the Sun. The eruption was observed with great detail by the Solar Dynamics Observatory's Atmospheric Imaging Assembly (SDO/AIA). Prominences are composed of hot plasma (ionized gas) from the sun's chromosphere. The material has a temperature of around 60,000 Kelvin. This temperature of solar material is best observed with the 304 Å wavelength filter on AIA. This movie shows the 304 Å wavelength images, first showing most of the solar disk and then zooming in on the prominence. This extreme ultraviolet light comes from singly ionized Helium, or He II. At its largest extent the prominence rises above the solar surface a distance equivalent to 30-40 earth stacked end-to-end. A coronal mass ejection (CME) associated with the eruption was observed by LASCO aboard the SOHO spacecraft. (credit: Solar Dynamics Observatory and helioviewer.org)

 

[EarthlingX]

SDC : Sun's Surprise: Even As It Relaxes, It May Heat Earth's Climate

By Denise Chow
SPACE.com Staff Writer
posted: 06 October 2010
01:01 pm ET



As the ultimate source of all the energy on Earth, the sun has an inextricable hand in driving our planet's climate and atmosphere. But a new look at the sun's connection to Earth's climate has returned some surprising results.

The study finds that during the most recent lull in the sun's weather cycle, the amount of energy that reached Earth increased, instead of decreasing as predicted. The planet may have experienced a slight warming effect as well, researchers said.

The study, led by Joanna Haigh, a professor of atmospheric physics at the Imperial College London, analyzed the types of radiation that reach Earth from the sun, and the various effects they have on our planet's atmosphere.

...

"Visible radiation is the only kind that, in any substantial quality, gets to the Earth's surface and heats the lower atmosphere," Haigh told SPACE.com. "We found that as the sun's activity declined from 2004 to 2007, more of this radiation was entering into the lower atmosphere."

...

 

[EarthlingX]

www.universetoday.com : Breaking News: The Sun Worked 175 Years Ago!

Oct 22nd, 2010

by Jon Voisey


The sunspot butterfly diagram. This modern version is constructed (and regularly updated) by the solar group at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

You’ll have to forgive my title. After writing so many articles as moderately as I could, I couldn’t help but engage in a bit of sensationalism of my own, especially in the interest of sarcasm. Although it’s not especially exciting that the sun has indeed been working for nearly two centuries (indeed, much longer than that), what is interesting is how using historical data, scientists have confirmed that process we see today have been relatively consistent since 1825.


The observations revolve around a familiar diagram known as the Butterfly diagram (pictured above). This diagram depicts the position of sunspots at various latitudes on the sun‘s surface as time progresses. At the beginning of a cycle, sunspots start of at high latitudes and as the cycle progresses, appear at lower and lower latitudes until they disappear and the cycle repeats. The pattern formed resembles the wings of a butterfly, thereby giving the diagram its name.

...

 

[MeteorWayne]

Quite an impressive sunspot group facing SOHO and Earth right now...

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/rea ... i_igr/512/