Colloquium: Scott McIntosh (HAO, Boulder)

A twist in the tale of the Solar Cycle

Over the last decade we have been actively following a trail of breadcrumbs on the Sun. That trail presented a puzzling picture that extended the quintessential spatial pattern of the sunspot cycle's evolution, the 'butterfly diagram', to much higher latitudes and much earlier times. This pursuit tied into observational work conducted in the 1980s that eventually went cold. The combined observational pattern becomes a set of nested chevrons rather than discrete sets of butterfly wings that we recently identified with the toroidal field component of the Sun's 22-year Hale Cycle. We can follow this pattern back to the very dawn of photographic solar observation, the early 1860s - or some 14 sunspot cycles. We identified a series of curious events which appear to mark the very final death throes of a Hale Cycle - we dubbed those 'terminators' - but appear to have a very definite effect on the production of sunspots - there are analogous events that mark the decline into solar minimum conditions. In short, the interaction of the Hale Cycles appears to have a critical role in shaping sunspot cycles and likely  their amplitude. We will illustrate these patterns, their signatures and effects, and discuss the potential impact on understanding the Sun's dynamo, and by extension those of other stars. 

• Datum:
  13. Oktober 2022, 14:30 – 15:30
  
  
• Ort:

  Colloquium Zoom

  
  
• Kontakt:
  Sydney Barnes