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The Sun has reached a period of peak activity in an 11-year cycle known as the Solar Maximum, ... The past two years marked the active phase of the solar cycle with a higher number of sunspots.
Solar cycle 23 lasted 11.6 years, beginning in May 1996 and ending in January 2008. The maximum smoothed sunspot number (monthly number of sunspots averaged over a twelve-month period) observed during the solar cycle was 120.8 (March 2000), and the minimum was 1.7. [29] A total of 805 days had no sunspots during this cycle. [30] [31] [32]
3-11 10-6 Solar cycle 20: 1964 – Oct 14.3 1968 – Nov 157 86 4-1 11-5 Solar cycle 21: 1976 – Mar 17.8 1979 – Dec 233 111 3-9 10-6 Solar cycle 22: 1986 – Sep 13.5 1989 – Nov 213 106 3-2 9-11 Solar cycle 23: 1996 – Aug 11.2 2001 – Nov 180 82 5-3 12-4 Solar cycle 24: 2008 – Dec 2.2 2014 – Apr 116 49 5-4 11-0 Solar cycle 25: 2019 ...
Sunspots result from the blockage of convective heat transport by intense magnetic fields. Sunspots are cooler than the rest of the photosphere, with effective temperatures of about 4,000°C (about 7,000°F). Sunspot occurrence follows an approximately 11-year period known as the solar cycle, discovered by Heinrich Schwabe in the 19th century.
The 11-year activity cycle of the Sun is tied to the number of sunspots, which in turn are linked to the intensity of space weather, including solar flare activity from the star.
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.
With the rise of the next 11-year sunspot cycle, magnetic energy shifts back from the poloidal to the toroidal field, but with a polarity that is opposite to the previous cycle. The process carries on continuously, and in an idealized, simplified scenario, each 11-year sunspot cycle corresponds to a change in the overall polarity of the Sun's ...
The sun emits the largest solar flare of this 11-year cycle, as imaged by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory on October 3. NASA/SDO NASA says the sun is in the highly active "maximum phase" of its ...