Theory The Transition Between Two 11-Year Solar Cycles

The Sun is working on a 11-year solar cycle, alternating a peak and a minimum. As the Sun walks to its peak, the activity is becoming more and more intensive, with numerous and large sunspots and numerous coronal mass ejections (CMEs) and flares, as, at the contrary, when marching to the minimum of the cycle, the solar activity is featuring few or no sunspots at all, and few other signs of activity

The occurrence of the minimum of the solar cycle number 23, by the end of the year 2007 was thus a relatively rare moment for the amateur astronomers, or any people casually interested in astronomy, with such a minimum occurring each 11 years only. After that the Sun showed a neat decline in its activity, with long periods of the surface without any sunspots, that eventually brought to the 'official' beginning of the new, number 24, solar cycle, by the beginning of 2008. That was heralded by a solar region, which appeared on Jan. 3, located at a high latitude North (by 27 degrees), having a negative polarity, and turning then into a region of sunspots. It was pointed to that way in the NOAA Report of Solar-Geophysical Activity dated Jan. 4: 'New Region 981 (N30E22) is classified as a Cso beta sunspot group. This region is likely a new solar cycle sunspot group.', and, further characterizd in the following bulletin: 'Region 981 (N29E14) is currently the only spotted region on the disk but is quiet and stable'. Those three characteristics only allow to single such a solar region like marking the beginning of a new solar cycle. It might that, before the event, the sequence of events be like: the lowest ebb of the sunspots regions and of the solar activity, generally; then, the Sun back to some activity, mostly in terms of magnetism, flares, or coronal mass ejections, with, further, unexpected flares coming from about nowwhere on a quiet Sun; and, eventually, the 'official' sunspot. A plage at a high latitude, and of a reverse polarity, had already been observed previously, as it had not turned into a sunspots region however.

click to a diagram showing the evolution of the new, number 24 solar cycle region 981 between Jan. 3 and 12 (you will note a swift translation of the region into small sunspots on Jan. 5 and 6, and a region of plage, especially visible when the region is nearing the limb, Jan. 9-12). picture site 'Amateur Astronomy' based on pictures SOHO

The onset of a new solar cycle is meaning too that all the sunspots of the cycle now feature a reverse polarity compared to the polarity of the previous cycle. The fact that a new cycle begins however doesn't mean -like should be the case- that any new sunspot group on the Sun will feature that reversed magnetic polarity, as, at the beginning of a new solar cycle, old-cycle and new-cycle spots frequently intermingle, eventually leading to that the spots from the old cycle come to zero and that sunspots fully belong to the new cycle only, that taking some period of time. The new, number 24 solar cycle peak is forecast to occur by 2011 or 2012, at a relatively earlier date than forecast, it seems