Growth of Cycle 25

[Philalethes]

4 minutes ago, Capricopia said:

Stanford have released updates for the Heliospheric Current Sheet and the Solar Polar Field Strength that both indicate that we are at/have passed solar max with the latest reading on CR 2280  2024:01:18 06h  at  50.2.  It was last above 70 in October...

Problem is that this doesn't always coincide with Solar maximum even in the few cycles we have available. For SC24 the overall maximum occurred a bit after this, and for SC23 well after this; for earlier cycles we don't really know.

I agree we're certainly around the time when maximum generally does occur relative to the state of the polar field, but I still think it's much too early to conclude that we're at it or that it's passed, when we could easily get another peak either later this year or even next year.

Of course, as has been echoed quite a bit, conceptualizing maximum as one single point based on the smoothed monthly SN might not be the most useful when considering the overall structure of a Solar cycle (it could have e.g. two prominent peaks, or a plateau, and so on), but it's still how it's generally defined.

[tniickck]

we eventually hit 217 sfu @hamateur 1953

Edited April 17 by tniickck

[WA1ZJL]

With my limited knowledge of space weather, it seems like things are just getting interesting.  The numbers have just exploded in the last few days.  I really hadn't been paying attention.  I can't help think of Mark Twain's comment that news of his death had been exaggerated or something like that! 

[Parabolic]

34 minutes ago, WA1ZJL said:

With my limited knowledge of space weather, it seems like things are just getting interesting.  The numbers have just exploded in the last few days.  I really hadn't been paying attention.  I can't help think of Mark Twain's comment that news of his death had been exaggerated or something like that! 

I'd say that's pretty spot on! The the really exciting stuff is just barely getting started (knock on wood).

[hamateur 1953]

20 hours ago, WA1ZJL said:

With my limited knowledge of space weather, it seems like things are just getting interesting.  The numbers have just exploded in the last few days.  I really hadn't been paying attention.  I can't help think of Mark Twain's comment that news of his death had been exaggerated or something like that! 

I LOVE that quote!  In the Sacramento Bee probably some prankster posted a notice of his death.  “ The news of my death has been greatly exaggerated”.  Twain ( Samuel Clemens) was a real prankster.  The name Mark Twain actually was a surveyor’s term for the midpoint in a river I think.   73 Mike N7ORL  And today 20:00 NRC posting is 227 only six points below Jan 2023 max of 234.  Up over 100 points in two weeks sounds like cycle 19. No such luck but we may break 250 this week anyway.  

Edited April 18 by hamateur 1953
SFI

[WA1ZJL]

Think you're correct on that Mike.  Trying to remember back 50 years to my schooling days but it definitely had something to do with a certain position on a river 

[Lawn Boy]

We could Google it, but what fun with that be. The way I remember it is that Samuel was a steamboat pilot, and they would call out to men on the deck to see how deep the water was by hollering mark twain. short for mark the string, or something to that effect.

[hamateur 1953]

1 hour ago, Lawn Boy said:

We could Google it, but what fun with that be. The way I remember it is that Samuel was a steamboat pilot, and they would call out to men on the deck to see how deep the water was by hollering mark twain. short for mark the string, or something to that effect.

@Lawn Boy is correct. The term actually meant the second fathom mark meaning twelve feet deep or the safe depth for steamboats when traveling the Mississippi down to New Orleans. Which I actually did once.  Best catfish lunch ever. And a triple expansion steam engine too I got to have a look at.  Was a real kick.  

[tniickck]

247 ssn today. record of the SC25 i am sure

[hamateur 1953]

3 hours ago, tniickck said:

247 ssn today. record of the SC25 i am sure

No doubt. SFI may have peaked. Tomorrow will tell.  We should have the resident pessimist do his predictions every cycle.  It really helped flux and our numbers this month so far, @tniickck  Later. Mike  ( tongue in cheek).  Or ifya an Aussie “ cheeky” 

Edited April 19 by hamateur 1953
Cheeky

[Philalethes]

1 hour ago, tniickck said:

247 ssn today. record of the SC25 i am sure

It would be (current record is June 22 of 2023, with an SN of 240), but it's still provisional at this point; as of pulling the data right now it's recorded as 233. But I guess if SWL simply records that SN of 247 it would be the record in the archive here.

[Maitreya]

2 hours ago, tniickck said:

Сегодня 247 ssn. рекорд SC25, я уверен

No, my dear friend, the records are still ahead, towards the end of 2024. 

[hamateur 1953]

25 minutes ago, Maitreya said:

No, my dear friend, the records are still ahead, towards the end of 2024. 

If it means more flux and ssn us hams are all in!!  😎

[Maitreya]

11 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

Если это означает увеличение потока и ssn, радиолюбители США готовы !! 😎

Keep up the good work, dear friend! You know, my father was also an amateur radio operator during his school years. One day he found the KGB frequency and somehow connected to it. It was very difficult for my grandmother to keep her son (my father) out of KGB prison. Only her reputation and social status saved my father. It was in Russia in 1967. That's the story of my family's life.😊

[Philalethes]

16 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

If it means more flux and ssn us hams are all in!!  😎

If the SN remains where it is now out April, we'll actually break the June SSN maximum in October already; might be a bit optimistic, but some of the regions currently present seem to be here to stay for at least a good week or so.

[hamateur 1953]

1 hour ago, Maitreya said:

Keep up the good work, dear friend! You know, my father was also an amateur radio operator during his school years. One day he found the KGB frequency and somehow connected to it. It was very difficult for my grandmother to keep her son (my father) out of KGB prison. Only her reputation and social status saved my father. It was in Russia in 1967. That's the story of my family's life.😊

Interesting.  The hams in the former USSR have always had my highest respect primarily because they typically would construct most of their own equipment as many in the ham community do to this very day.  Good she had some “ pull”.  Mike.  Edit:  In my country also there are heavy penalties for transmitting on unauthorized frequencies,  as well there should be I feel. Intentional interference with fire or police transmissions is typically dealt with quite harshly.  

Edited April 19 by hamateur 1953
Afterthoughts

[hamateur 1953]

Anyway back to our topic.  Growth of cycle 25.  Presently in 14 active regions average latitude april 19 2024 is 15.29 degrees.   Further hope that things should continue to improve with the typical rises and falls evident in most cycles.  Latitudes derived from SWPC as published on this site.  Incidentally this is also about where we were last June 2023.   Mike. 
as a humorous aside Solar Ham calls the southern active group a “ magnetic mess”. I certainly agree. 🤣I see even at sunrise six meters is open for sporadic Es already and from my area finally. With this many regions it seemed a good idea to work on antennas and take advantage of the many regions for a better average as well.  

Edited April 19 by hamateur 1953
Six meters

[Jay-B]

1 hour ago, hamateur 1953 said:

.  Growth of cycle 25.  Presently in 14 active regions average latitude april 19 2024 is 15.29 degrees.   Further hope that things should continue to improve with the typica

I was just about to ask if you did a latitude check recently lol! You must have read my brain waves. I need to put my tin hat back on lol!

[Philalethes]

4 hours ago, hamateur 1953 said:

Anyway back to our topic.  Growth of cycle 25.  Presently in 14 active regions average latitude april 19 2024 is 15.29 degrees.   Further hope that things should continue to improve with the typical rises and falls evident in most cycles.  Latitudes derived from SWPC as published on this site.  Incidentally this is also about where we were last June 2023.   Mike. 
as a humorous aside Solar Ham calls the southern active group a “ magnetic mess”. I certainly agree. 🤣

2 hours ago, Jay-B said:

I was just about to ask if you did a latitude check recently lol! You must have read my brain waves. I need to put my tin hat back on lol!

I thought I'd dig a bit into the HMI active region data to get a better visual on that development, since you seem to have a keen interest in it (and for the sake of my own interest too, naturally). I sampled the main SHARP (Spaceweather HMI Active Region Patch) series daily at 12:00 from the beginning of the data in 2010 and used the flux-weighted latitude of each active region. The data I used can be found here (for SC25, from 2019-12-01, ~11k records) or here (for the entire series, ~34k records).

I sorted them into regions with positive and negative latitude respectively, and took the average of each region in the respective hemisphere for each day; those are the fainter dashed red and blue lines. I also took a running average (smoothing) of those for an easier visual, represented by the more opaque solid red and blue lines. I also added a fainter dotted line for the distance in degrees between the two averages for each day to get an impression of that irrespective of asymmetry in the average latitude between the hemisphere.

Here's a 91-day average for the entire period:

And here's a 31-day average for just SC25:

And a couple of corresponding ones for the average regardless of hemisphere (i.e. using the absolute value of the latitude for each region); for SC25:

All of it:

And I thought I'd add one using the NRT (near real-time) series (for the dates from SC25 here, ~12k records), for a more "live" view; I also added in the 16° mark mentioned on the STCE tracking page, which supposedly on average comes ~3 months before maximum (albeit with an uncertainty of 10 months according to that same page, so it's obviously not anything exact). Just the one for both hemispheres:

Edited April 19 by Philalethes
added a couple of plots; and another one

[3gMike]

44 minutes ago, Philalethes said:

I thought I'd dig a bit into the HMI active region data to get a better visual on that development, since you seem to have a keen interest in it (and for the sake of my own interest too, naturally). I sampled the main SHARP (Spaceweather HMI Active Region Patch) series daily at 12:00 from the beginning of the data in 2010 and used the flux-weighted latitude of each active region. The data I used can be found here (for SC25, from 2019-12-01, ~11k records) or here (for the entire series, ~34k records).

I sorted them into regions with positive and negative latitude respectively, and took the average of each region in the respective hemisphere for each day; those are the fainter dashed red and blue lines. I also took a running average (smoothing) of those for an easier visual, represented by the more opaque solid red and blue lines. I also added a fainter dotted line for the distance in degrees between the two averages for each day to get an impression of that irrespective of asymmetry in the average latitude between the hemisphere.

Here's a 91-day average for the entire period:

And here's a 31-day average for just SC25:

That is a really nice visualisation. Thanks very much.

[hamateur 1953]

Interesting.  Flux-weighted latitude is an expression new to me.  As each region has appeared to me anyway to vary somewhat during its transit across our view as far as its contribution to overall net flux, I am missing a point you are going for apparently @Philalethes would you mind expanding on it a bit for me?  Thanks! Mike.  I love the visuals btw but otter likes fer now. Haha 

Edited April 19 by hamateur 1953

[Philalethes]

5 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

Flux-weighted latitude is an expression new to me.

Heh, news to me too, I was just looking over the different available values that could be used in the data series, and thought that seemed like the most appropriate one; it's essentially taking the flux density within each active region to determine its coordinates, i.e. if you have a somewhat spread-out region where you have one or more strong sunspots that are off-center, then the coordinates for that region will be shifted accordingly, weighted by the amount of flux. There were also values for the minimum and maximum latitudes and longitudes for the regions, so you could also get a non-weighted coordinate by averaging those; I'm not really sure which method is typically used. I don't really think it makes that much difference when all is said and done, but it makes sense to me to weight the location of an active region by where the most flux within that region is.

[hamateur 1953]

3 minutes ago, Philalethes said:

Heh, news to me too, I was just looking over the different available values that could be used in the data series, and thought that seemed like the most appropriate one; it's essentially taking the flux density within each active region to determine its coordinates, i.e. if you have a somewhat spread-out region where you have one or more strong sunspots that are off-center, then the coordinates for that region will be shifted accordingly, weighted by the amount of flux. There were also values for the minimum and maximum latitudes and longitudes for the regions, so you could also get a non-weighted coordinate by averaging those; I'm not really sure which method is typically used. I don't really think it makes that much difference when all is said and done, but it makes sense to me to weight the location of an active region by where the most flux within that region is.

Ok.  That explains it perfectly, Thanks! 
What I think was tugging at my memory was a discussion on specific Longitudes anyway, now that I am remembering better.  Someone ( I don’t remember now who) was tracking a particularly active longitude regardless of which AR was being presented.  I think.  Haha. Mike

[Philalethes]

35 minutes ago, hamateur 1953 said:

Ok.  That explains it perfectly, Thanks! 
What I think was tugging at my memory was a discussion on specific Longitudes anyway, now that I am remembering better.  Someone ( I don’t remember now who) was tracking a particularly active longitude regardless of which AR was being presented.  I think.  Haha. Mike

Oh yeah, that's right, and that's also quite interesting. Most of the HMI data series, including the ones mentioned above, do include the Carrington longitude of the observer (i.e. the Carrington longitude of the central meridian), so there should be lots of possibilities to visualize something of that sort as well. Maybe I'll try to do something of that sort mañana.

Edited April 19 by Philalethes
correction & clarity

[willow]

The daily sunspots number is really impressive right now! has been actively growing, reaching 300 today!