THE SUN EQUALS and

 SURPASSES 97 YEAR

RECORD!

As of Today (1 Oct 08), Nasa and the ' leading authorities' have begun to wonder about the current DEARTH of sunspots in this cycle (Link to articles HERE). The last two sunspots showed up on the 30th of September and again did not last long enough to be of any significance ior even to have had enough duration to passs beyond the limb of the Sun,  one was thought to be from the last solar cycle {23} and one from the 'current cycle' {24}.

It is now time to begin to think about the significance of this ..... this is the lowest number and longest spotless cycle since I was born (50 years). See this article on Nasa's about the Sunspot minimum and this article (on this site) about the decreased solar wind. 

This chart shows the last 54 years and the significance so far,

and THIS chart shows the last 100 years (+/-) 

At this point of both we are now under 110 days to the LONGEST spotless period in the last 96 years (other than 1954).

As the trend STILL does not seem to be on any great form of increase, we MAY see this kind of numbers (notice on the 100 yr chart that on the 27th of Sept 2008, we had matched the 1911+ 1923 numbers).  Now we have surpassed these numbers by and it is now the 5th longest since 1913, and still rising and the SUN is AGAIN blank.

See the front page of spaceweather.com where you can get each day's picture of the sun directly, as well as the CURRENT realtime picture as observed by SOHO (which for 3 Oct 08 is STILL blank) ssn = 0.

Keep watching, Maybe this IS significant as the 'brains' have begun to note the dearth of sunspots as well!

Below is a chart of the (KNOWN??) minimums as either detected by carbon 14 dating or direct observation but does not note the Dalton minimum (Deeper dip noted between the Maunder minimum and the modern max, also noted is the 1912 - 1913 minimum as the next dip in the scale between the Dalton minimum and the 'Modern max'). 

These were identified by either direct measurement of tempuratures (Dalton, Maunder), or for the OTHER minimums (Sporer, Wolf, and Oort minimums) guestimates figured by RADIOCARBON DATING and tree ring evidence, rather than actual tempuratures or sunspot numbers.