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Living with a Capricious Star: What Drives the Solar Cycle?
universetoday.com ^ | David Dickinson

Posted on 03/27/2015 8:15:26 AM PDT by BenLurkin

One such mystery confronting solar dynamics is exactly what drives the periodicity related to the solar cycle. Follow our star with a backyard telescope over a period of years, and you’ll see sunspots ebb and flow in an 11 year period of activity. The dazzling ‘surface’ of the Sun where these spots are embedded is actually the photosphere, and using a small telescope tuned to hydrogen-alpha wavelengths you can pick up prominences in the warmer chromosphere above.

This cycle is actually is 22 years in length (that’s 11 years times two), as the Sun flips polarity each time. A hallmark of the start of each solar cycle is the appearance of sunspots at high solar latitudes, which then move closer to the solar equator as the cycle progresses. You can actually chart this distribution in a butterfly diagram known as a Spörer chart, and this pattern was first recognized by Gustav Spörer in the late 19th century and is known as Spörer’s Law.

(Excerpt) Read more at universetoday.com ...


TOPICS: Astronomy
KEYWORDS:
Living with a Capricious Star...............

I'm willing to give it a try....

1 posted on 03/27/2015 8:15:26 AM PDT by BenLurkin
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To: BenLurkin

Crazy Eyes.


2 posted on 03/27/2015 8:27:04 AM PDT by Mike Darancette (Not deniable = Not falsifiable = Not science = Not even wrong.)
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To: BenLurkin
22 years is 11 years times two.

Very true and a good illustration of the importance of mathematics in astronomy. I loved reading about astronomy when I was young but I didn't major in it because I didn't want to have to deal with learning all that math.

3 posted on 03/27/2015 8:34:09 AM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: BenLurkin

“What Drives the Solar Cycle?”

A Chevy Nova? A Mercury Comet?


4 posted on 03/27/2015 8:39:16 AM PDT by WKUHilltopper (And yet...we continue to tolerate this crap...)
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To: BenLurkin

Man, globull warming can do ANYTHING!


5 posted on 03/27/2015 8:48:44 AM PDT by Blood of Tyrants (True followers of Christ emulate Christ. True followers of Mohammed emulate Mohammed.)
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To: WKUHilltopper

And a Ford probe.


6 posted on 03/27/2015 8:54:23 AM PDT by Vaduz
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To: Vaduz
And a Ford probe.

Or a Ford Prefect.


7 posted on 03/27/2015 9:37:32 AM PDT by Bloody Sam Roberts (I've been to the 15th broken moon of the Medusa Cascade & the diamond coral reefs of Kataa Flo Ko.)
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To: Verginius Rufus

Hilarious!


8 posted on 03/27/2015 10:10:06 AM PDT by fruser1
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To: Bloody Sam Roberts

LOL true


9 posted on 03/28/2015 11:40:00 AM PDT by Vaduz
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