It looks like the sunspot-free streak which gave us no sunspots until the last day of August has ended: a small sunspot appeared on the solar disk to close out August and welcome in September. Granted, it's a very "feeble" one as sunspots go, but it was given an official sunspot number. It will probably fade away within 72 hours.
This leaves the long summer blank period at 51 days, one day short of last year’s longest blank streak in a century (since 1913).
As we have seen during this highly irregular solar minimum, one sunspot does not a trend make. We’ll have to wait to see what the sun does the remainder of 2009, and if a clear upward trend in sunspots does indeed emerge.
So far in 2009, (through Sep 1) there have been 193 sunspot-free days. There is quite a good chance that this year will surpass 2008's 266 blank days to become the year with the highest number of blank days since1913. For this to happen, there need be only 60% of the remaining days of '09 blank.
Based on trends this summer, it should be a close call at the very least.
Comments
That spot was a joke, 100 years ago they would have never seen it, plus it didn't last 3 days, ergo it may have been something other than a sunspot (sunspots last longer, sometimes much longer).
IMO, still spotless and the count is 58 days and still counting...
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