Solar Science

The Sun has gone back to blank after having had just one sunspot group that caused otherwise rational people to go off their heads…

Here’s the magnetogram of the Sun showing precisely nothing that presages any sunspot formation:

Magnetogram of the Sun 16/07/2009

As a comparison, here is the sun image from the Extreme ultraviolet Imaging Telescope at 304 ångstroms for today and near solar maximum in 2000 by way of comparison

Sun at 17/07/2009 (left) and near solar maximum 31/05/2000 (right)

Now its easy to see how quiet the Sun really is at the moment. The prominences are weak, the coronal holes are very small, the corona (the solar atmosphere) shrunken.

All of this can be seen to be normal behaviour for the Sun, except that this hiatus between Solar Cycle 23 finally winding down and the next cycle is unprecedented in nearly a hundred years. (By the way, the overuse of “unprecedented” by climate alarmists has me wincing at using it as a cliché)

Eventually the solar cycle must return. The question is whether solar scientists gain insight into the behaviour of the Sun by understanding why their models failed (see below). The result can only be better science.

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