Activity Shifting North Of The Border

[Kaimbridge]

It appears that the first peak of Cycle 24 occurred around Novâœ11-Febâœ12 in the (Sunâœs) )northern hemisphere, and the second, bigger one, sometime between this February and now, in the southern hemisphere.

The past few days✠current uptick in activity, now seems to have shifted back to the northern hemisphere.

Is this how it usually works—active periods bounce back and forth (in dominent activity/intensity) between northern and southern hemispheres, with each âbounceâž presenting a decrease in activity/intensity?

 

     ∼Kaimbridge∽

[Guest Harry Twinotter]

I will give you my answer, the SpaceWeatherLive people will probably want to give their answer too.

I think there is no real pattern to it, you can get activity in either hemisphere. What you might notice is the sunspots will appear closer and closer to the solar equator as the maximum progresses.

The fact that this maximum is becoming double-peaked, and the second peak looks like it will be higher than the first just shows how unpredictable and variable the sun is.

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Th Sun is still very unpredictable, not only in the cycle itself but also in spot formation. They just come and go and one region can grow to an enormous complex and the other stays a tiny spot. Even after a solar maximum there can be moments with very large solar activity with enormous active regions on either side of the hemisphere (see SC23 where in october 2003, way after the solar maximum, some gigantic regions emerged).

In the graph of the solar cycle progression on the site you can see the sunspot number is very fluctuating and varying per month. In fact in SC24 we have head a first good peak followed with a very inactive month.

[Guest Keith Woodard]

So while reading this most enlightening intellectural discussion, is our G5 (yellow dwarf) class star actually a variable in disguise?

[Vancanneyt Sander]

Our sun is not a variable star that varies much in brightness. It is slightly variabel that if you compare solar max with minimum the sun is 0,07% brighter in solar maximum than in the solar minimum. But that is just too shallow to speak of a variable star.

A real variable star, as we know many of them, have much fluctuations in magnitude and this is not the case with our Sun.