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October  21, 2020

Carrington Rotation 2235 Reports

Summary of CR2235 (September 7th to October 4, 2020)

By Acting Associate Coordinator – Kim Hay

On September 15th NASA/NOAA stated that Cycle 24 hit rock bottom in December 2019, which meant that we were heading into Cycle 25.

NASA Diagram of Cycle 25

During this rotation there was a very inactive display of sunspot groups or spots. On September 9-10th there was a small area from a Cycle 25 active region that was active but did not produce any sunspots. A proto-sunspot from Cycle 25 showed up on September 14th then dissipated.

September 21st had an active region that rotated into view from the far-side. By September 23rd plage had shown up on the east limb. This area continued across the Sun and showed up in H-alpha and Calcium light as well as in the Magnetogram data until October 4th. There was a sunspot number (AR2273) assigned to this area, but it never produced a visual sunspot group seen in white light.

On September 24th there was a G1-class geomagnetic storm that produced green auroras in the higher latitudes for up to 4 nights.  The Sun produced a flare that sent the solar wind towards Earth, impacting on September 29th and generating pink auroras.

The Sun went 34 days with no sunspots during this rotation period.

Thank you to our contributors and observers whose reports were referenced in creating this summary of CR2235: Monty Leventhal, David Teske, Theo Ramakers, Howard Eskildsen, Guilherme Grassmann. All images and sketches can be found in our ALPO Solar Gallery under CR2235.

A Brief Overview of CR2235

By Theo Ramakers

Carrington Rotation CR2235 covered the time period from 2020-09-07 1745 UT – 2020-10-05 0018 UT.

The observations can be viewed in my Solar Archive for CR2235 which can be accessed at: http://ceastronomy.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=51093

The rotation brought us 25 spotless days and ended a spotless streak of 33 days on 9/24, which extended out of the previous rotation. We saw a small and very unstable new region AR2773, which appeared on two days, 9/24 and 9/26, each for less than 24 hours. Although its plage could be followed until it rotated around the Western limb, no spots were recorded for the rest of the rotation. The size of the Active Region was 10 millionths on both days, giving a Total Region Active Region Area of 20 millionth, while the largest Wolf Number of 13 was recorded on 9/25. Overall Solar Activity remained Very Low while the rotation increased the spotless days count since solar maximum to 851 spotless days. Finally, during the period SWPC reported 1 A-class, 19 B class flares, of which 14 happened on 9/21, and one C1.0-class flare. The C-class Flare, was observed on 09/25/2020.

This time I would like to feature some images showing the plage of the old AR2773 on three consecutive days, before it turned to the far side of the Sun.

 

Three images of AR 2773

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