The Dutch Observatory

April 7, 2019 on 8:17 pm | In Sun | Comments Off

Cloudy today and expecting rain storms.  So here some interesting images.  You are thinking that spotless days at the Sun are boring?  Think again!!!  Here three composites of images which have been submitted to the ALPO archive in the last week or so which show evidence of (a little?) Cycle 25 activity.  Since the polarization of the Sun switches with every cycle, we have been looking for reverse polarized areas on the Sun for a while, and although very small, we have seen a good number of them.  So here three composites showing this activity on images of our observers.  Since the areas are very small and not even qualify to be called a pore or a plage, they have been cropped out of the full disk images you can find in our Archive.  The images to the right of them in the composite have been provided by SDO (Solar Dynamic Observatory) and show the polarization of these reversed polarized areas. (Northern hemisphere leading (right) white, positive polarization; Southern hemisphere leading (right) black, negative)