Just in time for the imminent event of Solar Maximum, when the sun reaches a crescendo in its 11-year cycle of magnetic activity and all the sunspots, solar flares, coronal mass ejections, and other magnetic mayhem that comes with it, Chabot Space & Science Center is opening a new solar exhibition that features the latest in stunning ultraviolet satellite imagery from NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory!
The exhibition "Touch the Sun" will open on December 22nd—because we figure since the world is NOT ending on December 21st, might as well celebrate.
NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory, which you will have heard me ramble on about if you're a regular reader of these blogs, is one of the latest and most advanced space-borne solar observatories and has been revealing the wonders of the sun since 2010 as we've never seen them before.
Solar Maximum is in progress as I type and is expected to reach a peak sometime in early 2013. But, as with weather, we won't know exactly when the peak will occur until after it's passed and solar activity begins to relax again, sloping off toward Solar Minimum in the years to come.
The 11-year solar cycle has been known of for a few hundred years now, practically since the time when observers first were able to make routine counts of sunspots using telescopes. Galileo is attributed with being one of the first to make regular observations of sunspots, recording their positions, sizes, shapes, and numbers regularly. After decades of observations by different astronomers a pattern in the rise and fall of sunspot numbers was detected: a fairly regular peak-and-trough pattern over time, with the peak sunspot numbers separated by about 11 years on average.