William Atkins
Friday, 03 April 2009 22:01
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 2
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.”