Longest blank sun since 2010
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The sun has now been blank of sunspots for five days, the longest such stretch since 2010, during the last stages of the last solar minimum.
Nor is this blank stretch over. Though I have no doubt that sunspots will return to the Sun in the next few days, this sudden arrival of blank days suggests again that the solar maximum might be ending far sooner than presently predicted.
My annual birthday-month fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now on-going. Not only do your donations help pay my bills, they give me the freedom to speak honestly about science and culture, instead of being forced to write it as others demand.
Please consider donating by giving either a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar below.
Regular readers can support Behind The Black with a contribution via paypal:
If Paypal doesn't work for you, you can support Behind The Black directly by sending your donation by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman, to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
The sun has now been blank of sunspots for five days, the longest such stretch since 2010, during the last stages of the last solar minimum.
Nor is this blank stretch over. Though I have no doubt that sunspots will return to the Sun in the next few days, this sudden arrival of blank days suggests again that the solar maximum might be ending far sooner than presently predicted.
Spots on the far side aren’t counted, right?
For purposes of determining sunspot numbers, yes, farside spots are not counted. This is simply to maintain a consistent counting system from before the space age, when there were no space probes capable of seeing the far side.
Do we currently have space probes to monitor the far side of the sun on a regular basis? My memory whether we launched such probes is vague.
We have a pair of satellites called Stereo specifically designed to see the entire face of the sun.
Update: I forgot to add that one of the two Stereo craft was lost in 2014, which makes it difficult to get complete coverage at this time.
So, if a sun spot can’t be seen then it doesn’t exist…
Willi: Of course not. As I said, they only count the spots on the near side because, until the space age, that was all they could see and count. In order to have the sunspot count remain consistent they use only the nearside spots in the count. However, in studying the sun and its solar cycle solar sciences absolutely do not ignore the far side. This is why the Stereo spacecraft were launched and built, to give sciences a 360 degree view of the sun.
I wasn’t being serious, just trying to play off “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it…”
Willi, read your second comment and knew exactly where you were going with it, humor not lost on all of us!
If the dark spots on the sun were dark matter…
Then they would exist even though no one has ever seen one :)
A news report today said “the ozone hole is smaller this year”. They’re giving the banning of CFCs the credit even though it’s always small during a solar decline. Someday they will connect the dots between ozone consumption and stratospheric clouds from solar activity.