The Year Of The Spotless Sun

The 'Law of Logical Argument' as used by Al Gore: "Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about". Not sure who did this quote first, but it sure makes sense, doesn't it.

Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the "blankest year" of the Space Age.

"Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "We're experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle."

When talking about sunspot number, the data reliability is all over the map. Generally though, good data is available back to 1700, the quality of the data is considered as poor during 1700 - 1748, questionable during 1749 - 1817, good during 1818 - 1847, and reliable since 1848. So we have reliable data for the last 160 years out of our planets estimated 4.5-4.6 billion years of existence. Not what you would want if you were trying to make 'guaranteed' predictions - LOL.


Sunspot counting is an arcane art:

Here is how it's done --- Sum total of spotless days since the first day without spots, which is designated as month January 2004. We weren't talking spotless days in a row. The issue is cumulative spotless days in the transition to SC24, not consecutive spotless days -- Notice there is no time associated with the spotless day count. For reference, we are currently in the beginning phases of sunspot cycle 24(SSC24) and the ending phase of sunspot cycle 23(SSC23) -- "The Transition". For purposes of record keeping and analysis, the first spotless day was defined as month January 2004 for the transition from SSC23 to SSC24, which is ongoing. The first day a SSC24 sunspot showed was officially on January 4, 2008, for record keeping purposes, it was designated January 2008 as the month SSC24 started.

Bringing the data current with my manual analysis -- We had 446 spotless days as of the end of September, there were 20 spotless days in October and 16 in November, bringing us up to 482 as of the end of November. It is now December 25th, we added 22 more spotless days for December, so far, so we are up to 504. Breaking the 500 spotless day barrier before 2009 begins. Here is where you get the current 30 day count from. We have passed 1912 for total calendar year spotlessness as of December 25th with 260 spotless days in 2008 versus 253 in 1912. I am hoping that we don't repeat the 1912-1913 pattern since 1913 was the record year for spotlessness with 311.

UPDATE: It's all over -- The year that is, 2008 will bring the total number of sunspotless days this month to 28 and for the year to 266, clearly enough to make 2008, the second least active solar year since 1900. The count since the beginning of solar min now stands at 510 sunspotless days -- and counting. --- END UPDATE

We have to use the sun's calendar:

But, and it's a very big but -- You have to realize that the sun does not follow the Earth's calendar, so a better way to look at sunspots might be this method where the start months are synchronized and then graphs are made for analysis from those start points. Sunspot transition 14-15 was the most recent long minimum, where reliable data is available, so the closest in behavior we have to go by. If you do this type of sliding scale analysis, you find we have already passed the minimum number of spotless days in any 365 continuous day count, during several periods in 2008. So you could say we have already broken the record set in the 1912-1913 transition. So are we now going up, or is it we are now still going down. But -- Its all a very big if.


What the heck am I talking about:


Left: A photo of the sun taken Sept. 27, 2008. The face of the sun is "blank," i.e., completely unmarked by spots.

Right: The sun on Sept. 27, 2001. The sun's face is peppered with colossal sunspots, all crackling with solar flares.

Credit: ESA/NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO)
Larger image of sun in 2008
Larger image of sun in 2001

It is a very quiet time on our sun. If you extrapolate the total spotless days of the current minimum transition, we are likely to see a century's old transition record broken early next year for spotless days of a sunspot cycle transition. Remember, we only have reliable data since 1848.

Today's sun -- Is the current image for when you click the link. Daily sunspot number historical records can be downloaded here.

Solar Minimum history in the making:

"This gives us a chance to study the sun without the complications of sunspots," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Right now we have the best instrumentation in history looking at the sun. There is a whole fleet of spacecraft devoted to solar physics--SOHO, Hinode, ACE, STEREO and others. We're bound to learn new things during this long solar minimum."