HowTo Find the New Cycle Sunspots

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Solar Weather Affects Our Hobby!
I am keeping this short and simple. Sunspots will appear dark in the middle of a region filaments and taller filament surrounding the dark area. This image explains what area of the sun to expect new cycle sun spots (SC25). I use AIA 171 A (Angstroms). The sun exhibits a corkscrew magnetic field. The yellow line connects from the left next to the lower leg of a high plasma arc all the way to the right to another high plasma arc on its upper leg on both hemispheres on the solar disk. Along this line is a good idea where to start. Look along the line, toward the edges of the polar coronal holes, or just below the yellow lines. Regions can also represent Cycle 25 without them being a sunspot. Those MIGHT grow into sunspots. As shortwave listeners we want sunspots because flux tubes are more apparent. Increasing the chance for DX reception and better local reception. There are still flux tubes appearing but at a low rate.


Solar Cycle 25 could begin at any time between now and the middle of 2020.

Some good sources that show current images from the SDO space vehicle:
SDO
SDO | Solar Dynamics Observatory

LMSAL Solar Soft
SolarSoft Latest Events
(May have down times!)

 

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Spotting the Non-Spot
Today I had my eye on 1 particular region in the southwest hemisphere on the solar disk. It's very small and looks insignificant but yet it is a SC25 region which isn't yet a sunspot if it will be one is questionable. There is a 15 hour time difference in these two HMI images. There is a high chance for it to disappear because the sun isn't showing much of an imbalance or not quite there yet to produce awe inspiring sunspots. Right now the most impressive features are PCP's and PCF's.
I have circled them in yellow. the latter has a yellow arrow pointing at it. That it started as 1 filament then split into 2 filaments. In this HMI Intensitygram, white is moving toward Earth and black is moving away from Earth or +/-.(Please pardon the size difference. Left is from NASA UMBRA website. Right is taken from SDO NASA site)
15 hours ago>>>>>>>Current


If you wish to see it in motion I have captured 1 day of images on helioviewer.org in SDO's AIA 171 filter. AIA 171 shows transitional zone, active regions.

Helioviewer.org

Solar and heliospheric image visualization tool.

helioviewer.org

 

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Another SC25 region NOT yet a sunspot. Questionable if it will grow into a spot. This is a sign beginning of SC25 at a slow crawl.

SDO AIA 171/211/304A


SDO HMI Colorized High Intensity Magnetogram. SC24 was -/+ polarity. SC25 is +/- polarity.
Green areas represent + polarity and yellow areas represents - polarity.

 

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Quick Update

The sun formed a short lived sunspot in the equatorial region AR2751, a SC24 remnant, and AR2750 a SC25 at 30 degrees south.
A new sunspot is appearing to grow 5 degrees north east in the equatorial zone. It has a +-+ polarity. This type of polarity tells me it is from old cycle 24. It also shows sc25 polarity. To me this means polarity reversal on the sun is in progress as the sun reforms it's magnetic field. SC24 is decaying in front of our eyes,

 

[charlieprimero]

I subscribed to this YouTube channel which publishes a Sun Weather video early every morning...

Suspicious0bservers

www.youtube.com

Interesting stuff.

 

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Quick update to SC25 .

I am VERY confident stating SC25 is going to rise in the coming months ahead. Go ahead and ignore the "grand solar minimum" gossip.

The PFSS image is a comparison between 2009-11-23 and today's PFSS image. Data looks very close. I can see the bands starting to twist at the poles in the "Now" side. The overall magnetic field is set up just right for the twisting of the heliospheric magnetic bands north and south. There were two large and complex regions AR1032 and AR1033 on the 2009-11-23 side in the image.
(Green bands are North (+) Red bands are South (-))

Image courtesy of NSO: Global Oscillation Network Group (GONG)