Increased solar activity

but then again we had a nice bank holiday weekend ????

True...
and when I checked for sunspots myself on Saturday, there were only 2 small groups on the whole serface.


...I wonder...


Seanie.

i don't think it would have a huge affect. i remember somewhere reading that the difference between solar max and solar min was something like 0.1% on average. but then during the 'maunder minimum' there was also the little ice age so maybe over a long time it would but over a short time it would only be slight. although we would not have as good a record of the atmosphere in the 1600's as would now it could have been something else responsible.
stephen.

Seanie,
This brings me back to the talk you gave us in Limerick (SAC) a while back about how maybe solar influences can affect the upper atmosphere.
Back then you were refering to bacteria decending from the upper atmosphere so maybe there is a corresponding slight change in the weather/climate which might be caused by all this.
All you have to do is think about global warming and how a change in only 1 degree (a tiny change) can have such a big influence.

Thats right Dave,
it has been shown that our atmosphere expands outwards during periods of high solar activity i.e. material from flares etc interacting with Earth, even during and after aurora...

If a large enough wave hits Earth, it puts the atmosphere off-balance for a while.

Seanie.

Next thing you know the weather forecasts on TV will be refering to "stellar" weather :lol:

Some nice activity developing on the Sun again.
0656 is increasing in size and showing some nice detail in this image from the SOHO spacecraft.
(Hopefully the sky will be clear when I get home from work this evening)



Michael

Michael,
I was out looking at the sun through the 4 inch celestron refractor + thousand oaks filter yesterday and also saw the same activity, interesting, I placed the 70mm solarmax h-alpha scpoe next to it and was able to directly compare the h-alpha image with the white light image.
All sunposts except 657 were visible, and there was a whitish/brighter feature visible next to 656, looked like faculae of somesort (through the h-alpha scope). Some small flares were also visible, I'm going to miss this scope.