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John H. Collins, john h. collins sr. solar cycle, sun, sunspots

DadSpot Activity Up

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Sunspots Are on the Rise?

My dad is an inveterate sunspot watcher. He once spent 11 years charting sunspots, drawing a solar chart with its sunspots for each day — he’s that into the phenomenon. Of course, he noticed right away that the motions of sunspots follow a path as the Sun rotates, and he charted the solar max and min for that time. He’s not a trained astronomer — he’s an acute observer and his fascination with the Sun and its activity is a marvelous thing.

Some years ago he had the chance to chat with then-director of AAVSO, the late Dr. Janet Mattei. He told her about his 11 years of hand-drawn charts and she was astounded at what he’d done — and remarked at how detailed his drawings were. Daddy and Janet had a long chat about sunspots and observing them and how the Sun is a variable star. I think that visit with Janet remains one of Daddy’s most treasured memories.  Well, that, and being able to visit Harvard Observatory for the Cecelia Payne-Gaposchkin centenary that year.

Sunspot 1039 is making its appearance for the new solar cycle. Click to embiggenate.

We just spent a few days in Arizona for the holidays, and to celebrate Daddy’s 80th birthday. Even though he’s hospitalized right now, Daddy’s still going strong for sunspots — so much so that now I always think of them as “Dadspots”.

He’s not dragging the sunscope out so much, but nowadays does his sunspot-spotting via the World Wide Web. He mentioned to me the other day that he’d noticed more sunspots and we talked awhile about the coming rise in solar activity that always accompanies a solar maximum (in the 11-year cycle of solar activity).  He’d already noticed the sunspot group 1039, which is part of the new solar cycle 24 that will let us see a steady rise in activity over the next few years.  And, I expect Daddy’ll keep his attention focused on sunspots (Dadspots) — as long as he can.

How much activity can we expect? Even though December 2009 sunspot numbers were up, the new solar cycle is predicted to be below average in intensity compared to solar maxima of other years. Even so, the current rise in sunspots and solar activity (if it continues) will be a relief to solar researchers after the long sunspot drought we’ve had over the past couple of years. Everybody’s keeping an eye on the Sun (well, not literally — NEVER look at the Sun directly without proper protection) to see if the rise in spots will continue.

For my part, to honor my dad’s life-long interest in sunspots, I’m renaming this new cycle the “John H. Collins, Sr. Solar Cycle.” Of course, it’s completely unofficial, but if you’d like to use that name in blog posts and tweets, I’m sure he would be honored.  Let’s hope for more Dadspots!

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Diving Into Sunspots

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Sunspots Revealed

First view of what goes on below the surface of sunspots. Lighter/brighter colors indicate stronger magnetic field strength in this subsurface cross section of two sunspots. For the first time, NCAR scientists and colleagues have modeled this complex structure in a comprehensive 3D computer simulation, giving scientists their first glimpse below the visible surface to understand the underlying physical processes. (Click to embiggen.)
First view of what goes on below the surface of sunspots. Lighter/brighter colors indicate stronger magnetic field strength in this subsurface cross section of two sunspots. For the first time, NCAR scientists and colleagues have modeled this complex structure in a comprehensive 3D computer simulation, giving scientists their first glimpse below the visible surface to understand the underlying physical processes. (Click to embiggen.)

Today’s what lots of folk think of as the first day of summer for us northern hemisphere types and first day of winter for the southern hemisphere folks. (It’s actually the mid-point, marking the point when the Sun is the farthest north in its yearly path across the sky.)  Today’s the solstice and FATHER’s DAY here in the U.S…. and just in time for this auspicious occasion, the folks at National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research bring us a wonderful computer model of sunspots.  I’m dedicating today’s entry to my dad, who loves to look at sunspots! This one’s for you, Daddy!

The interface between a sunspots umbra (dark center) and penumbra (lighter outer region) shows a complex structure with narrow, almost horizontal (lighter to white) filaments embedded in a background having a more vertical (darker to black) magnetic field. Farther out, extended patches of horizontal field dominate. For the first time, NCAR scientists and colleagues have modeled this complex structure in a comprehensive 3D computer simulation, giving scientists their first glimpse below the visible surface to understand the underlying physical processes. (©UCAR, image courtesy Matthias Rempel, NCAR.
The interface between a sunspot's umbra (dark center) and penumbra (lighter outer region) shows a complex structure with narrow, almost horizontal (lighter to white) filaments embedded in a background having a more vertical (darker to black) magnetic field. Farther out, extended patches of horizontal field dominate. For the first time, NCAR scientists and colleagues have modeled this complex structure in a comprehensive 3D computer simulation, giving scientists their first glimpse below the visible surface to understand the underlying physical processes. (©UCAR, image courtesy Matthias Rempel, NCAR.

The high-res simulations of sunspots are an important tool for scientists to learn more about these blots of seemingly dark regions on the Sun (I say “seemingly” because they’re actually just cooler than the surrounding area, thus appearing darker).  Sunspots are manifestations of the magnetic fields that play across the Sun’s surface.  They’re also closely associated with massive ejections of material that can come straight at Earth and cause things like aurorae, or even go so far as to disrupt our communications networks and power systems. You may have heard of the term “space weather” — well, sunspots are often involved in the processes that cause space weather.  If you’ve been following the Space Weather FX project I’ve been working on for Haystack Observatory, we’ve been talking a lot about the effects of space weather on all kinds of systems.

Creating detailed simulations of sunspots would not have been possible even as recently as a few years ago. But now, we have the latest generation of supercomputers and a growing array of instruments to observe the Sun — and when you marry the two, you can get some amazing simulations of real life. Partly because of such new technology, scientists have made advances in solving the equations that describe the physics of solar processes. The Sun is a complex object, ever-changing and difficult to probe. So, coming up with a computer model is an important step. “This is the first time we have a model of an entire sunspot,” says lead author Matthias Rempel, a scientist at NCAR’s High Altitude Observatory. “If you want to understand all the drivers of Earth’s atmospheric system, you have to understand how sunspots emerge and evolve. Our simulations will advance research into the inner workings of the Sun as well as connections between solar output and Earth’s atmosphere.”

Outward flows from the center of sunspots were discovered a hundred years ago, and ever since then, atmospheric physicists have been working on explanations for the very complex structures they see in sunspots. This includes the fact that their numbers rise and fall during each 11-year solar cycle.

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, NCAR’s sponsor. The research team improved a computer model, developed at MPS, that built upon numerical codes for magnetized fluids that had been created at the University of Chicago.  GO read more about it (and see some of their really COOL videos) at the UCAR/NCAR web site.