Vol 57, No 7 (2017)

Data from three solar observatories (Learmonth, Holloman, and San Vito) are used to study the variations in the average number of sunspots per sunspot group. It is found that the different types of sunspot groups and the number of sunspots in these groups have different solar cycle and cycle to cycle variations. The varying ratio between the average number of sunspots and the number of sunspot groups is shown to be a real feature and not a result of changing observational instruments, observers’ experience, calculation schemes, etc., and is a result of variations in the solar magnetic fields. Therefore, the attempts to minimize the discrepancies between the sunspot number and sunspot group series are not justified, and lead to the loss of important information about the variability of the solar dynamo.

Two important sources of information about sunspots in the Maunder minimum are the Spörer catalog (Spörer, 1889) and observations of the Paris observatory (Ribes and Nesme-Ribes, 1993), which cover in total the last quarter of the 17th and the first two decades of the 18th century. These data, in particular, contain information about sunspot latitudes. As we showed in (Ivanov et al., 2011; Ivanov and Miletsky, 2016), dispersions of sunspot latitude distributions are tightly related to sunspot indices, and we can estimate the level of solar activity in the past using a method which is not based on direct calculation of sunspots and weakly affected by loss of observational data. The latitude distributions of sunspots in the time of transition from the Maunder minimum to the regular regime of solar activity proved to be wide enough. It gives evidences in favor of, first, not very low cycle no.–3 (1712–1723) with the Wolf number in maximum W = 100 ± 50, and, second, nonzero activity in the maximum of cycle no.–4 (1700–1711) W = 60 ± 45. Therefore, the latitude distributions in the end of the Maunder minimum are in better agreement with the traditional Wolf numbers and new revisited indices of activity SN and GN (Clette et al., 2014; Svalgaard and Schatten, 2016) than with the GSN (Hoyt and Schatten, 1998); the latter provide much lower level of activity in this epoch.

The results of the work of the global observation network are considered, and a comparative analysis of the data of various coronal observatories is performed. The coronal activity index has been reconstructed for the period 1939–2016 based on the data of various observatories in Kislovodsk system. For this purpose, the corona daily intensity maps from the Sacramento Peak and Lomnický Štít observatories according to the Solar-Geophysical Data journal have been digitized; they supplement the data of other observatories. The homogeneity and continuity of the corona observations at the Kislovodsk station, including activity cycle 24, is confirmed. Unfortunately, the only observatory at present that continues observation of the spectral corona in Fe XIV 5303 Å and Fe XIV 6374 Å lines is the Kislovodsk astronomical station Mountain Astronomical Station (MAS) of the Central Astronomical Observatory, Russian Academy of Sciences (Pulkovo). The data on the combined corona in 5303 Å line are analyzed. It is shown that there is a high correlation of the intensity index of green corona with solar radiation measurements in the vacuum UV region. Data on the beginning of the new 25th activity cycle in the corona at high latitudes are presented.

The spatiotemporal and chaotic dynamics of variations in area of sunspot groups related conventionally to small (area <50 Msh) and large (area >50 Msh) populations is analyzed. The Greenwich Observatory–Marshall Space Flight Center data were used. The results show that both sunspot populations have a single initial source, which is a magnetic flux generated by the dynamo process (presumably at the bottom of the convective zone) and is responsible for the 11—22-year periodicity of solar activity. A possible explanation of the revealed different behavior of the considered populations is that the magnetic flux is partially involved in another process responsible for the shaping of primarily very large sunspot groups. This process develops presumably in the upper layer of the convective zone with an unstable amplitude and a period varying within 1–2 years. The analysis of power spectrum of the Wolf number time series has indicated the difference between dynamic characteristics of the two studied processes.

The preliminary results of solar filaments distinguished in daily H-alpha observations at Kodaikanal (1912–2002) are presented. To mark the boundaries of solar filaments, methods based on automated procedures of marking low-contrast objects on the solar disk, as well as editing of the marked boundaries in a semiautomated manner, were developed. The characteristics of solar filaments were analyzed. Latitudinal diagrams of filaments number in 15–23 activity cycles were constructed. As is shown, one maximum in the filament latitudinal distribution may be clearly distinguished during activity cycles in both hemispheres. This maximum is located slightly higher (θ ~ 25°–30°) than the sunspot distribution maximum (θ ~ 14°–17°). However, there are no other local maxima related to the zonal structure of the large-scale magnetic field (Makarov and Sivaraman, 1989).

The observed variations of the magnetic properties of sunspots during eruptive events (solar flares and coronal mass ejections (CMEs)) are discussed. Variations of the magnetic field characteristics in the umbra of the sunspots of active regions (ARs) recorded during eruptive events on August 2, 2011, March 9, 2012, April 11, 2013, January 7, 2014, and June 18, 2015, are studied. The behavior of the maximum of the total field strength B_max, the minimum inclination angle of the field lines to the radial direction from the center of the Sun α_min (i.e., the inclination angle of the axis of the magnetic tube from the sunspot umbra), and values of these parameters B_mean and α_mean mean within the umbra are analyzed. The main results of our investigation are discussed by the example of the event on August 2, 2011, but, in general, the observed features of the variation of magnetic field properties in AR sunspots are similar for all of the considered eruptive events. It is shown that, after the flare onset in six AR sunspots on August 2, 2011, the behavior of the specified magnetic field parameters changes in comparison with that observed before the flare onset.

According to present-day ideas, nonlinear saturation of the astrophysical dynamo and, in particular, the solar dynamo, are based on the consideration of the magnetic helicity balance, to which the helicities of the large-scale magnetic field and small-scale field related to it contributed. We show that, in a mirrorasymmetric medium, the small-scale magnetic field generated by the small-scale dynamo also has a nonzero magnetic helicity, which also should be taken into account in the magnetic helicity balance.

We consider the prospects for developing a forecast system for space weather (SPW) parameters with the use of home facilities for groundbased observations of solar activity. The space weather forecast can be conventionally divided into three components: (i) the prediction of recurrent, slowly changing events connected with the topology of the large-scale magnetic field, (ii) the estimation of fluxes of UV and high-energy radiation, and (iii) the observation of high-speed phenomena, such as solar flares and eruption processes, and the prediction of their consequences at the the Earth’s orbit. At present, to predict recurrent events, data from regular observations of the large-scale field of the Sun by the solar telescope–magnetographs for operative (realtime) prediction (STOP) are effectively used. To estimate high-energy fluxes, to register eruption events, and to estimate their geoefficiency, data from the patrol optical telescope–spectrographs may be used. Patrol telescopes operate in automatic mode and register the processes with an interval of approximately one minute. To detect eruption processes, we propose a method based on the difference between the intensity values in the wings of chromospheric spectral lines. The results of the use of the observational complex of the Kislovodsk Mountain Astronomical Station for the SW forecast are considered in the paper.

We consider a model that couples the magnetic field fluctuations in the heliosphere with random shifts of force line footpoints on the Sun. This model generalizes the Giacalone (2001) model by taking into account the large-scale inhomogeneity of the solar wind velocity. This generalization aims to explain a number of specific features of the distribution of IMF directions, such as the change in the asymmetry of the distribution of IMF directions as a function of heliographic latitude and the solar cycle phase and the correlation of azimuthal angles and inclinations of the IMF; the sign of this correlation changes during the solar magnetic cycle. The simulation results have shown that the gradients of the solar wind speed can actually explain these specific features of the distribution of IMF directions, at least qualitatively.

An inhomogeneous time series of measurements of the percentage content of biogenic silica in the samples of joint cores BDP-96-1 and BDP-96-2 from the bottom of Lake Baikal drilled at a depth of 321 m under water has been analyzed. The composite depth of cores is 77 m, which covers the Pleistocene Epoch to 1.8 Ma. The time series was reduced to a regular form with a time step of 1 kyr, which allowed 16 distinct quasi-periodic components with periods from 19 to 251 kyr to be revealed in this series at a significance level of their amplitudes exceeding 4σ. For this, the combined spectral periodogram (a modification of the spectral analysis method) was used. Some of the revealed quasi-harmonics are related to the characteristic cyclical oscillations of the Earth’s orbital parameters. Special focus was payed to the temporal change in the parameters of the revealed quasi-harmonic components over the Pleistocene Epoch, which was studied by constructing the spectral density of the analyzed data in the running window of 201 and 701 kyr.

The evolution of a solar-mass star before and on the main sequence is analyzed in light of the diminished efficiency of convection in the first 500 Myr. A numerical simulation has been performed with the CESAM2k code. It is shown that the suppression of convection in the early stages of evolution leads to a somewhat higher lithium content than that predicted by the classical solar model. In addition, the star’s effective temperature decreases. Ignoring this phenomenon may lead to errors in age and mass determinations for young stars (before the main sequence) from standard evolutionary tracks in the temperature–luminosity diagram. At a later stage of evolution, after 500 Myr, the efficiency of convection tends to the solar value. At this stage, the star’s inner structure becomes classical; it does not depend on the previous history. On the contrary, the photospheric lithium abundance contains information about the star’s past. In other words, there may exist main-sequence solar-mass stars of the same age (above 500 Myr), radius, and luminosity, yet with different photospheric lithium contents. The main results of this work add considerably to the popular method for determining the age of solar-type stars from lithium abundances.

Insolation is one of the most important factors that affect the changes in the global climate and weather. Therefore, its accurate calculation is a relevant question of modern climatology. In this study, we present the calculation of the annual insolation over the course of the Holocene, taking into account the variations of the solar constant estimated from the radiocarbon content in tree rings (Vieira et al., 2011). It has been found that the insolation changes in latitudinal belts form a trend determined by the Earth’s spatial position; the latitudinal gradient of insolation increases from the poles to the equator with time. The variations in integral insolation over the sphere and integral insolations over the hemispheres have a minor trend caused by the orbital component, but they are mostly determined by the solar constant variations (its contribution to the insolation amplitude variations is ten times greater than the contribution of orbital parameters). These results can be used to interpret global climate changes.

We compare the measured values of emission measure EM and temperature T of coronal flare plasma following the GOES, RHESSI, and SDO/AIA satellite observations for the events of July 4, 5, and 7, 2012, in the NOAA 11515 active region. We show that the values of EM and T can vary widely (up to one order of magnitude for EM) depending on the technical features of instruments and processing technique. The maximum difference has been found to be between RHESSI and SDO/AIA measurements for temperature and between GOES and SDO/AIA measurements for EM. We discuss the pros and cons of the approaches used and the practical effects of the resulting numerical estimates for EM and T.