{"id":1131,"date":"2010-01-05T06:02:51","date_gmt":"2010-01-05T10:02:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/?p=1131"},"modified":"2010-01-06T16:32:34","modified_gmt":"2010-01-06T20:32:34","slug":"seeing-spots-cycle-24-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/?p=1131","title":{"rendered":"Seeing Spots &#8211; Cycle 24"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Close call. The end of December was a maelstromof new sunspots when compared to the previous 24 months. Hope springs eternal.<\/p>\n<p>The activity in the last couple of weeks of the year were enough to preserve 2008&#8217;s second place ranking in the list of &#8220;most spot free&#8221; years. <a title=\"2009, Third quietest year for sunspots on record\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2009\/12\/the-year-in-sunspot\/\">But 2009 is in firm grip as number three on the list.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>If the spot trend were to continue unabated, that would put the minimum somwhere around January 2009 &#8211; though without more research, I can&#8217;t recall if that iswhen the first cycle 24 mini-spots appeared. Seems about right. <a title=\"ARRL prop forcast for 12\/31\/2009\" href=\"http:\/\/www.arrl.org\/w1aw\/prop\/2009-arlp054.html\">The 3 month moving average is also going up<\/a>, another bit of good news for the radio geeks.<\/p>\n<p>Plots of cycles 1 through 23 indicate the numbers ramp up at a higher rate than they drop off, but that is more pronounced in the cycles with high peak numbers. Given how poorly the prognosticators did with predicting the minimum, I suspect the next peak will also be hard to predict. My own W.A.G. is a peak of around 90 sometimes in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;course, a Wild Guess ain&#8217;t none too scientific. But there ain&#8217;t a whole lot of data gathered on a system as complex as the ginormous fusion bomb going off 24\/7\/365 over the last four billion or so years, only &#8220;one AU&#8221; away. So I stand by the guestimate proudly, without hesitation.<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;course, I must admit to <a title=\"Eye Candy\" href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/underwire\/2009\/12\/sexy-geeks-2009\">being distracted byWired&#8217;s link to nerdeye candy<\/a> over on their web site. Yikes. Or in nerd-speak, &#8220;OMG!&#8221;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Close call. The end of December was a maelstromof new sunspots when compared to the previous 24 months. Hope springs eternal.<\/p>\n<p>The activity in the last couple of weeks of the year were enough to preserve 2008&#8217;s second place ranking in the list of &#8220;most spot free&#8221; years. But 2009 is in firm grip as number three on the list.<\/p>\n<p>If the spot trend were to continue unabated, that would put the minimum somwhere around January 2009 &#8211; though without more research, I can&#8217;t recall if that iswhen the first cycle 24 mini-spots appeared. Seems about right. The 3 month moving average is also going up, another bit of good news for the radio geeks.<\/p>\n<p>Plots of cycles 1 through 23 indicate the numbers ramp up at a higher rate than they drop off, but that is more pronounced in the cycles with high peak numbers. Given how poorly the prognosticators did with predicting the minimum, I suspect the next peak will also be hard to predict. My own W.A.G. is a peak of around 90 sometimes in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;course, a Wild Guess ain&#8217;t none too scientific. But there ain&#8217;t a whole lot of data gathered on a system as complex as the ginormous fusion bomb going off 24\/7\/365 over the last four billion or so years, only &#8220;one AU&#8221; away. So I stand by the guestimate proudly, without hesitation.<\/p>\n<p>O&#8217;course, I must admit to being distracted byWired&#8217;s link to nerdeye candy over on their web site. Yikes. Or in [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Continue reading <a href=\"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/?p=1131\">Seeing Spots &#8211; Cycle 24<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1131"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1133,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1131\/revisions\/1133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/w4kaz.com\/qth\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}