• Question: on saturday it was recoded that a few solar flares went of do you believe the sun is goning in to a dormant period?

    Asked by marcusw to Adam, Catherine, Karen, Leila, Nazim on 13 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Karen Masters

      Karen Masters answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      We actually think the Sun is just coming out of a dormant period. The Sun has these 11 year cycles when it goes from less active to more active and back again. Most recently the Sun has been less active, and that less active part of the cycle was a bit longer than normal (no-one really knows why), but it seems to be coming out of it, and the best estimate right now puts the peak of its active period in May 2013.

      This is all tracked mostly from the number of sunspots on the surface – which is then plotted on graphs like this one: http://sidc.oma.be/html/wolfmms.html and makes the 11 year cycle really obvious.

    • Photo: Adam Stevens

      Adam Stevens answered on 13 Mar 2012:

      Yeah, the sun is going to be getting a lot more energetic soon, like Karen says!

    • Photo: Leila Battison

      Leila Battison answered on 19 Mar 2012:

      Nope, the sun is just about to get a lot more exciting!

      We’ll be able to see a lot more sunspots on the surface, we’ll get some really awesome northern lights, and we’re probably going to be having some issues with our TV and GPS satellites!

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