Conclusion
Here we present a visualization spanning over 200 magnetograms from SOHO/MDI and SDO/HMI, which transforms each into three PFSS models for the dipole, quadrupole and octupole components of the Solar magnetic field. This video, in essence, highlights the results of Section 3 in Ref. 1, and although this does not show anything new, it is an interesting way to view the wealth of solar data available.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/24838790 ... ode=opaque [21 second reconstruction]The evolution of the dipole, quadrupole and octupole components of the global magnetic field during the last 22 years. Top Left: Synoptic magnetograms from both MDI and HMI in a time series from 1996.6-2017.9, the color represents the radial magnetic field with the color scale covering -50G to 50G. Top Right: The decomposed components from the spherical harmonic analysis, from top to bottom, dipole, quadrupole and octupole, with increasing m from left to right (the leftmost panels represent the axisymmetric components). Bottom Row: PFSS reconstructions of the dipole, quadrupole, and octupole components alone, each including all values of m for their given
http://hmi.stanford.edu/hminuggets/?p=2129
http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronom ... 100-years/Another word of caution came from Hathaway, who notes that the Maunder Minimum might have been a catastrophic event rather than a gradual trend. “Many of my colleagues are poring over historical records to find out . . . what did lead up to the Maunder Minimum?” he says. “New observations suggestion that the cycle before the Maunder Minimum wasn’t particularly small.”
Changes in magnetic fluxes usually follow changes in electric currents, at least here on Earth.
It might be speculated that the decadal changes in the solar magnetic field follow variations in local galactic charge flows. The scrambling of the fields, as noted here by others, may be allowing the infiltration of GR’s into the solar system.
As a side note, the rotation of the solar mag field (imaged above) probably also becomes more chaotic, blowing up Parker’s “ballarina skirt”.
That rotation, faster at the ecliptic than at the poles, may be an insight into H A Staples’ “solar sweep”; elaborated in his seminal work Cosmic Machinery.
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