As the Sun Turns: Solar Minimums and Maximums

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Maria
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Re: As the Sun Turns: Solar Minimums and Maximums

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RED AURORAS OVER NEW ZEALAND: Auroras are usually green. However, when a geomagnetic storm crested over New Zealand on August 5th, a completely different color filled the sky. "It was amazingly red," reports Minoru Yoneto, who sends this picture from Queenstown, NZ:

Image

"I was conducting a stargazing tour, showing my clients the Milky Way and Magellanic Clouds, when the aurora australis appeared," says Yoneto. "A quick 15s exposure with my digital camera captured the magnificent colors."

What made these auroras red? Ordinary green auroras come from oxygen atoms excited by geomagnetic activity about 150 km above Earth's surface. Red auroras are also caused by oxygen, but at a much higher altitude: Between 150 km and 500 km, the temperature and density of the atmosphere favors atomic transitions that emit red photons instead of green. For some reason, yesterday's geomagnetic storm excited the upper reaches of the atmosphere more than usual, producing a red glow over both hemispheres.
During a solar minimum, there is also an increase in vulcanism. Throughout the world, there are a multitude of volcanoes that are spewing ash and smoke. This can also turn the skies red at sunset. We are getting awesome red sunsets here in Los Angeles, and we are not the only ones seeing red.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.

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Barbara
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Re: As the Sun Turns: Solar Minimums and Maximums

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Wow what a picture !

So the solar minimum is drawing to a close, I understand ? You say it might be over in autumn - just a few short months away ! That would be GREAT to be finally released from the tedious solar minimum !
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Maria
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Re: As the Sun Turns: Solar Minimums and Maximums

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Barbara wrote:Wow what a picture !

So the solar minimum is drawing to a close, I understand ? You say it might be over in autumn - just a few short months away ! That would be GREAT to be finally released from the tedious solar minimum !
Even if the solar minimum were to reach the lowest point this autumn, with an even lower number of sunspots and increasing days of spotlessness, we will experience a gradual rise in sunspot activity, which will only peak sometime in the year 2023 or 2024. Therefore, it will not be over in a few months.

Look carefully at this chart below. Follow the blue or grey outline of this bell shaped curve. Technically, we will not have fully emerged from this solar minimum until the 72 or even 84 month marker, or later, so there are still years ahead of us. Remember that the chart below tracks spotless days, not sunspot numbers. Currently, we do not know if we have reached the height of spotlessness or if it is still to come. Some scientists say that we have already reached this point in February 2019, others say that this point has been reached in July 2019, while other scientists say that we still have not yet reached this point but that we are quickly approaching the Meeus smoothed minimum, which should be sometime in the autumn of 2019 or in the early months of 2020.

The chart below does not include July 2019 data, which had 27 days of spotlessness. Currently, in this month of August, we have already had at least one Active Region, AR2745, so this month may or may not exceed the July 2019 data in the number of spotless days. However, it is significant that one Southern latitude sunspot area displayed the reverse polarity of the New Solar Cycle 25 early in December of 2016, and that others in both the Southern and Northern latitudes are starting to show this reverse polarity. This means that we are progressing forward, and that the month of the Meeus smoothed minimum is approaching or has already approached. We just cannot tell at this point in time.

Image

See http://sdoisgo.blogspot.com/2018/04/the ... le-25.html for more information about New Solar Cycle 25 active regions and their reverse polarities. Northern Latitude Active Regions from new Solar Cycle 25 (SS25) will shown a -/+ Black/White or Yellow/Green magnetogram while Southern Latitude Active Regions from the New Solar Cycle 25 will have a +/- White/Black or Green/Yellow magnetogram.
As we progress from the solar minimum to the solar maximum peak, the sunspots will increasingly show the new polarity of SS25.

Image
Southern sunspots from old Solar Cycle 24 have a -/+ polarity. This sunspot is the opposite: +/-. According to Hale's Law, sunspots switch polarities from one solar cycle to the next. This sunspot is therefore a herald of Solar Cycle 25.

Other factors also mark this as a new-cycle sunspot. For one thing, it has the high latitude (27S) typical of sunspots in the early stages of an emerging solar cycle. For another, the sunspot is tilted. According to Joy's Law, high-latitude, new-cycle spot groups almost always have this property.

Solar cycles always mix together at their boundaries. Right now we are experiencing the tail end of decaying Solar Cycle 24. Today's sunspot suggests that we are also experiencing the first stirrings of Solar Cycle 25.
Reference
www.spaceweather.com for July 7, 2019

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Maria
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Re: As the Sun Turns: Solar Minimums and Maximums

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GEOMAGNETIC STORM--UNDERWAY NOW: A stream of high-speed solar wind is lashing Earth's magnetic field, blowing at speeds greater 700 km/s. This is sparking geomagnetic storms around the poles. On Sept. 1st, storm conditions are flickering between category G1 and G2. If this storm persists until nightfall, sky watchers in the USA as far south as Wisconsin, Michigan and Montana could see Northern Lights. Aurora alerts: SMS Text.

Göran Strand sends this picture from Östersund, Sweden. "On Sept. 1st, I got to see my first Northern Lights of the season," he says. "The geomagnetic activity is still very good so if you have clear skies tonight, head out and look to the North!"
http://www.spaceweather.com/index.php for September 2, 2019

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Maria
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Re: As the Sun Turns: Solar Minimums and Maximums

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We are in the middle of a Solar Minimum, but scientists have not yet determined that we have reached the solar meesus as that point of the deepest solar minimum is only determined in hindsight.

From May 29 to June 23, 2019, we experienced 25 spotless days, which was the longest consecutive stretch of spotlessness during this solar minimum.

According to data from Belgium's Royal Observatory, today, September 8, 2019, Universal Time, there have been a total of 500 spotless days during this solar minimum with 168 spotless days occurring in 2019.

NASA, which has different criteria, has determined that we have had 174 days of spotlessness (6 extra days), with a total of 531 spotless days.

From http://www.spaceweather.com/
here is the data from NASA/NOAA

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 5 days
2019 total: 174 days (69%)
2018 total: 221 days (61%)
2017 total: 104 days (28%)
2016 total: 32 days (9%)
2015 total: 0 days (0%)
2014 total: 1 day (<1%)
531 days of spotlessness

No one is at error, NASA or Belgium, because the sun changes minute by minute with ephemeral sunspots appearing and disappearing at random.

When cloudy conditions appear almost worldwide, then we cannot view the sun except through our use of satellites. This means that astronomers in different regions of the world cannot always view the sun. Astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere, especially those in Australia, South Africa, or South America will see the sun in a different light than those in the Northern Hemisphere with some astronomers seeing active regions of sunspots while others do not. In addition, we can only view the sun during daylight hours, so when Belgium is in darkness, those of us in the USA might see a spotless sun. However, 12 hours later, when the USA is asleep, Belgium might view the sun as having a few spots that disappear hours later.

"See there chap, that was the cone of a sunspot. And I got it on video to prove it, but it vanished before my eyes when I blinked."

How many milliseconds does it take to prove that the sun is spotless or that there is a developing sunspot?

We are dealing in our own reality, where things change minute by minute, millisecond by millisecond in a blink of time.

However, the real reality exists beyond our vision, in the eternal sphere of the heavens, where God exists and where Heaven continues on in an eternal presence no matter what our little sun is doing.

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a sinner.

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