Solar cycle about to stop?

[VK2GOM]

Interesting...

http://www.skyandtelescope.com/communit ... 44859.html

All stuff we can't control, just like the climate.

73 - Rob VK2GOM / G0MOH

[VK4GHZ]

I knew there was a reason for giving 6M up, and moving up to microwaves where you actually use your hands to build things.

[VK4CZ]

I'm going to be a little more optimistic, and hope that David Hathaway of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is right....

But he and others note that we don't yet know whether the first signs of Cycle 25 are simply being delayed.

[VK6SIX]

And here is the forecast from OF77XX:

1. The sun will do whatever it jolly well wants to do.

2. There is a 50% chance that we had our peak last equinox.

vk6six

[VK5AJL]

Everybody focusses on the 11 year cycle because it is comparable to a human life time and can be easily remembered by middle aged people. In any case, it is more like 11 years and a month or two. The Maunder minimum wasn't the only one in history. There was also very low solar activity, called the Dalton Minimum, from about 1800-1830 with only two small 11 year peaks 1/4 the size of the 1960 peak. There was also a minimum from about 1880-1930. Radio wasn't invented long enough in 1930 for radio operators to have correlated much data about sunspot activity and HF propagation.

There is more than just one cycle. There is also a roughly 40 or 50 year cycle and roughly a 100 to 120 year cycle and I am sure many more. These all reinforce and cancel each other out in much the same way as amplitude modulating a carrier with audio frequency produces sidebands.

I have not studied all these cycles so I make no predictions. There may not be another reasonable cycle until we are all dead and gone OR it might pick up suddenly over the next year or so like it has done in the past.

1. The sun will do whatever it jolly well wants to do.
2. There is a 50% chance that we had our peak last equinox.

Except that equinoxes and solstices have nothing at all to do with sunspot cycles.

[VK6SIX]

Gday

The highest solar flux index since 20th june 2007 [when the SFI hit the bottom at 66 ] happened to occur last equinox, pure coincidence.

So lets say last march april 2011 except last equinox and all will be sorted HI.

vk6six

[VK5AJL]

Sorry, I should have put 100% agreement before saying about the equinoxes. I did not mean to imply you didn't know it was pure coincidence.

I did find it curious that the 1950 edition of "The radio amateur's handbook" only mentions an 11 year cycle in passing. It does mention seasonal variations summer to winter ie. at the equinoxes, night to day variations, 28 day cycles (sun's rotation) and all sorts of stuff seemingly forgotten since we all seem focussed on waiting for the next 11 year cycle. Not having a couple of 11 year cycles might not necessarily be such a bad thing. We might learn or find out more about other things.