This still from a video taken by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory shows the Aug. 8, 2011 solar flare as it appeared in the ultraviolet range of the light spectrum. The flare registered as an X6.9 class sun storm, the largest of the Solar Cycle 24. (Credit NASA) |
SAN FRANCISCO — The sun’s current space-weather cycle is the most anemic in 100 years, scientists say.
Our star is now at “solar maximum,”
the peak phase of its 11-year activity cycle. But this solar max is
weak, and the overall current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, conjures
up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s,
researchers said.
“None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn
something,” Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University told reporters here
today (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.
Source Article from http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/AscensionEarth2012/~3/pMHSe-_A9Ak/sun-activity-coolest-in-century.html
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