Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Northern lights activity to increase during solar maximum. Electromagnetic activity is increasing as the sun continues to reach the height of its 11-year solar cycle, which NASA said is expected ...
‘Significant change’ in Sun’s activity may come as good news for sky watchers ahead of next year’s solar eclipse
Scientists said the sun is now in its solar maximum, or the peak of its 11-year solar cycle.
The level of solar activity beginning in the 1940s is exceptional – the last period of similar magnitude occurred around 9,000 years ago (during the warm Boreal period). [ 11 ] [ 12 ] [ 13 ] The Sun was at a similarly high level of magnetic activity for only ~10% of the past 11,400 years.
Solar activity has been on a declining trend since the 1960s, as indicated by solar cycles 19–24, in which the maximum number of sunspots were 201, 111, 165, 159, 121 and 82, respectively. [14] In the three decades following 1978, the combination of solar and volcanic activity is estimated to have had a slight cooling influence. [15]
Solar cycle 24 is the most recently completed solar cycle, the 24th since 1755, when extensive recording of solar sunspot activity began. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It began in December 2008 with a minimum smoothed sunspot number of 2.2, [ 3 ] [ failed verification ] and ended in December 2019. [ 4 ]
The sun will reach solar maximum, or a peak in activity across its 11-year cycle, about a year sooner than originally predicted. Auroras, solar flares and space weather are all expected to increase.
A solar flare is a sudden flash of brightness observed over the Sun's surface or the solar limb, which is interpreted as an energy release of up to 6 × 10 25 joules (about a sixth of the total Sun's energy output each second or 160 billion megatons of TNT equivalent, over 25,000 times more energy than released from the impact of Comet ...