Unusual drop in sunspot activity & some astrological musings. .

A recent article in space.com talks about the unexpected drop in sunspot activity at present. This trend was noticed many months ago which I mentioned in the article titled

Asteroids crossed near the earth – any news from astrology?

In my understanding, the solar system behaves in unison like a single cell. If the Sun is not active now (contrary to the expected activity) , the causes can be anything from its own internal dynamics to an extraneous influence from, say, a planet like Jupiter. I mention Jupiter because the current lull in the sun more or less coincides with the cycle of Jupiter. The cycle of Jupiter which includes 5 rounds of Jupiter around  the zodiac takes 60 years. In reality it takes more than 60 solar years. The space.com article says that a similar lull of the sun was reported 70 years ago. It was around that time a fresh cycle of Jupiter began. The next  fresh cycle of Jupiter is due to begin in 2014 when 'Vijaya' year begins. A deeper look into Jupiter's current position, its activity etc might throw some light on the Sun's lull.

Another co-incidence I have seen is that the world as of now is 'cooling off' - a trend which would continue until 2025.
An article written on this can be read here

Predicting Cold waves.

In this article I have shown how the position of other planets with reference to the signs (specific locations on the sky) coincide with cool times on the earth. Until 2025 the cooling period continues. The space.com article also foresees a less active sun until then.


Yet another reason could be that we are in the middle of two mini Ice ages. In a cycle of  41,000 years, the peaking of Ice age happened about 20,000 years ago. 20,000 years from now we may getting the next peak time. If so, we are in a phase of a  beginning of the next cycle of Ice age. This cycle is believed to be caused by the gradual shift in the tilt of the earth's axis. But there may be other reasons also - one of them being the sun itself undergoing some phases that would contribute to gradual cooling of the earth.


Yet another reason could be that the sun is presently passing through the center of the Milky way galaxy with dense star clusters hindering the cosmic rays. Generally the background matters. The background clusters and skies do contribute to the heat or coldness. In astrology we go by the background such as fiery, watery signs etc.


For example when moon passes through watery signs, there is scope to expect rains. There are many such combinations which I believe have been written down by the Vedic sages after studying the skies from generation after generation - for thousands of years.

Currently a simple parameter itself is enough to say that the cooling of the Sun is temporary but not inimical.

Whenever Saturn has moved through its exaltation sign, some calm has prevailed on the earth. The lower sun spot activity also has shown that people have remained clam during those times. If the sun spot activity had to keep pace with its normal course, it must be peaking when Saturn transits Libra, its sign of exaltation. These two do not go together. It seems when Saturn has to ensure some calmness on man's attitudes, the sun can not behave contrary to that and hence has mellowed itself down for the time being. To say this in another way, Saturn's present transit across Libra has an influence on sun's activity. When saturn moves through Virgo, Libra etc, the sun becomes less active. We can not ignore the astrological rule that Sun is in debility where Saturn is exalted!


Looking at the mundane predictions by Varahamihira, he too says that the minimal number of sun spots  is good for mankind. The less they are, the lesser are the human sufferings. The world minus Osama and troubles for scamsters might perhaps be some good indicators of this trend.

-jayasree

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From

http://www.space.com/11960-fading-sunspots-slower-solar-activity-solar-cycle.html

Sun's Fading Spots Signal Big Drop in Solar Activity

by

Denise Chow


 A photo of a sunspot taken in May 2010, with Earth shown to scale. The image has been colorized for aesthetic reasons. This image with 0.1 arcsecond resolution from the Swedish 1-m Solar Telescope represents the limit of what is currently possible in terms of spatial resolution.
CREDIT: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, V.M.J. Henriques (sunspot), NASA Apollo 17 (Earth)

(The inserted image of Earth is for comparison with the size of the sunspot) 



Some unusual solar readings, including fading sunspots and weakening magnetic activity near the poles, could be indications that our sun is preparing to be less active in the coming years.


The results of three separate studies seem to show that even as the current sunspot cycle swells toward the solar maximum, the sun could be heading into a more-dormant period, with activity during the next 11-year sunspot cycle greatly reduced or even eliminated.

The results of the new studies were announced today (June 14) at the annual meeting of the solar physics division of the American Astronomical Society, which is being held this week at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.


"The solar cycle may be going into a hiatus," Frank Hill, associate director of the National Solar Observatory's Solar Synoptic Network, said in a news briefing today (June 14).


The studies looked at a missing jet stream in the solar interior, fading sunspots on the sun's visible surface, and changes in the corona and near the poles. [Photos: Sunspots on Earth's Star]


"This is highly unusual and unexpected," Hill said. "But the fact that three completely different views of the sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation."


Spots on the sun
Sunspots are temporary patches on the surface of the sun that are caused by intense magnetic activity. These structures sometimes erupt into energetic solar storms that send streams of charged particles into space.


Since powerful charged particles from solar storms can occasionally wreak havoc on Earth's magnetic field by knocking out power grids or disrupting satellites in orbit, a calmer solar cycle could have its advantages.


Astronomers study mysterious sunspots because their number and frequency act as indicators of the sun's activity, which ebbs and flows in an 11-year cycle. Typically, a cycle takes roughly 5.5 years to move from a solar minimum, when there are few sunspots, to the solar maximum, during which sunspot activity is amplified.


Currently, the sun is in the midst of the period designated as Cycle 24 and is ramping up toward the cycle's period of maximum activity. However, the recent findings indicate that the activity in the next 11-year solar cycle, Cycle 25, could be greatly reduced. In fact, some scientists are questioning whether this drop in activity could lead to a second Maunder Minimum, which was a 70-year period from 1645 to 1715 when the sun showed virtually no sunspots. [Video: Rivers of Fire Inflame Sunspots]


Hill is the lead author of one of the studies that used data from the Global Oscillation Network Group to look at characteristics of the solar interior. (The group includes six observing stations around the world.) The astronomers examined an east-west zonal wind flow inside the sun, called torsional oscillation. The latitude of this jet stream matches the new sunspot formation in each cycle, and models successfully predicted the late onset of the current Cycle 24.


"We expected to see the start of the zonal flow for Cycle 25 by now, but we see no sign of it," Hill said. "The flow for Cycle 25 should have appeared in 2008 or 2009. This leads us to believe that the next cycle will be very much delayed, with a minimum longer than the one we just went through."
Hill estimated that the start of Cycle 25 could be delayed to 2021 or 2022 and will be very weak, if it even happens at all.


The sun's magnetic field


In the second study, researchers tracked a long-term weakening trend in the strength of sunspots, and predict that by the next solar cycle, magnetic fields erupting on the sun will be so weak that few, if any, sunspots will be formed.


With more than 13 years of sunspot data collected at the McMath-Pierce Telescope at Kitt Peak in Arizona, Matt Penn and William Livingston observed that the average magnetic field strength declined significantly during Cycle 23 and now into Cycle 24. Consequently, sunspot temperatures have risen, they observed.


If the trend continues, the sun's magnetic field strength will drop below a certain threshold and sunspots will largely disappear; the field no longer will be strong enough to overcome such convective forces on the solar surface.
In a separate study, Richard Altrock, manager of the Air Force's coronal research program at NSO's facility in New Mexico, examined the sun's corona and observed a slowdown of the magnetic activity's usual "rush to the poles."


"A key thing to understand is that those wonderful, delicate coronal features are actually powerful, robust magnetic structures rooted in the interior of the sun," Altrock said. "Changes we see in the corona reflect changes deep inside the sun."
Altrock sifted through 40 years of observations from NSO's 16-inch (40 centimeters) coronagraphic telescope.


New solar activity typically emerges at a latitude of about 70 degrees at the start of the solar cycle, then moves toward the equator. The new magnetic field simultaneously pushes remnants of the past cycle as far as 85 degrees toward the poles. The current cycle, however, is showing some different behavior.


"Cycle 24 started out late and slow and may not be strong enough to create a rush to the poles, indicating we'll see a very weak solar maximum in 2013, if at all," Altrock said. "If the rush to the poles fails to complete, this creates a tremendous dilemma for the theorists, as it would mean that Cycle 23's magnetic field will not completely disappear from the polar regions. … No one knows what the sun will do in that case."


If the models prove accurate and the trends continue, the implications could be far-reaching.


"If we are right, this could be the last solar maximum we'll see for a few decades," Hill said. "That would affect everything from space exploration to Earth's climate."


(You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.)