Sun is giving us a blank stare: No sunspots!

William Atkins
Friday, 03 April 2009 22:01

Science - Space

Consequently, SpaceWeather.com made the comment: “Sunspots have all but vanished and consequently the sun has become very quiet.”

And, NASA states in its article Spotless Sun: Blankest Year of the Space Age, “As of Sept. 27, 2008, the sun had been blank, i.e., had no visible sunspots, on 200 days of the year. To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go back to 1954, three years before the launch of Sputnik, when the sun was blank 241 times."

The NASA article shows a picture, courtesy of the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), of the Sun on September 27, 2008, with absolutely no sunspot activity—a spotless day on the Sun.

In fact, David Hathaway, a solar physicist at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, states, "Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low. We're experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle." [NASA]

Hathaway adds, "This is the quietest sun we've seen in almost a century.”

The progress of solar minimum can be monitored with a new "Spotless Days Counter" on SpaceWeather.com.

The website states, “Daily updated totals tell you how many spotless days there have been in a row, in this year, and in the entire solar cycle.”