Spotless Sun:  Blankest Year of the Space Age

Astronomers who count sunspots have announced that 2008 is now the 'blankest year' of the Space Age.

As of September 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.

"Sunspot counts are at a 50-year low," says solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center. "We're experiencing a deep minimum of the solar cycle."

Coinciding with the string of blank suns is a 50-year record low in solar wind pressure, a recent discovery of the Ulysses spacecraft. (See the Science@NASA story Solar Wind Loses Pressure.)

The pressure drop began years before the current minimum, so it is unclear how the two phenomena are connected, if at all. This is another mystery for SDO and the others.

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2008/
30sep_blankyear.htm?list1066509

Our thanks to Mike Terry for this item