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Sunspot activity has been measured using the Wolf number for about 300 years. This index (also known as the Zürich number) uses both the number of sunspots and the number of sunspot groups to compensate for measurement variations. A 2003 study found that sunspots had been more frequent since the 1940s than in the previous 1150 years. [30]
Magnetic field lines often connect neighboring sunspots, which are the source of solar eruptions. The plasma, or charged gas, has a temperature of about 1.8 million degrees Fahrenheit. Sunspots ...
Sunspot number is correlated with the intensity of solar radiation over the period since 1979, when satellite measurements became available. The variation caused by the sunspot cycle to solar output is on the order of 0.1% of the solar constant (a peak-to-trough range of 1.3 W·m −2 compared with 1366 W·m −2 for the average solar constant).
Schwabe continued to observe the sunspot cycle for another 23 years, until 1867. In 1852, Rudolf Wolf designated the first numbered solar cycle to have started in February 1755 based on Schwabe's and other observations. [6] Wolf also created a standard sunspot number index, the Wolf number, which continues to be used today.
CMEs often form around sunspots, although scientists aren’t entirely sure why. Sunspot formation is cyclical, and the current solar cycle has reached the highest number of sunspots since 2001 ...
Movement of tectonic plates against each other sends seismic waves rippling across earth’s surface
The solar storms of May 2024 (also known as 2024 Mother's Day solar storm [1] or Gannon storm in memory of Jennifer Gannon, [2] a space weather physicist [3]) were a series of powerful solar storms with extreme solar flares and geomagnetic storm components that occurred from 10–13 May 2024 during solar cycle 25.
The flare and the associated sunspots were visible to the naked eye, and the flare was independently observed by English astronomers R. C. Carrington and R. Hodgson. At around the same time as the flare, a magnetometer at Kew Gardens recorded what would become known as a magnetic crochet , a magnetic field detected by ground-based magnetometers ...