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No sunspots appeared this week, although there were hopeful signs.
Spaceweather.com reported on October 11 that a new sunspot was
struggling to emerge, but it faded quickly, and the sun has been
blank since then.  We got a nice response from Dr. Joseph B. Gurman,
Project Scientist on the NASA Solar Terrestrial Relations
Observatory, or STEREO, see //stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/, regarding
observing sunspots on the far side of the sun.  Those bright spots
are indicators of magnetic activity, which may or may not be
associated with sunspot groups.  Joe wrote, The bright areas you
see, called plage, pronounced plahj, in the solar physics business
thanks to some solar astronomer of yore who thought they looked like
white sand beaches, plage being French for beach, represent areas
higher in the solar atmosphere than the visible surface of the Sun
where 1, magnetic fields are stronger than in their surroundings,
and 2, material has been heated to higher temperatures than in their
surroundings.  The two appear to go together, somewhat paradoxically
when one considers that only a few hundred km lower in the
atmosphere, sunspots are cooler than the surrounding photosphere.
Plage is a feature of both active regions with sunspots, sunspot
regions, and active regions without visible spots. Indeed, in the
coronal extreme ultraviolet, EUV, lines, Fe IX, X, Fe XII, Fe XV,in
which the STEREO images are obtained, we call anything of a certain
size and that bright that persists for hours to weeks an active
region, regardless of whether NOAA has assigned it a number.  If
there are no spots, it may be old plage from a region whose spots
have disappeared, a new region that will eventually produce spots,
or a modest active region that never shows more than tiny pores,
spots without penumbrae, that are sometimes very difficult to see
from the ground.  We also heard from William Thompson of NASA
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, who wrote No, we
can tell if theres an active region or not, but we cant determine
from the EUVI data alone whether that active region will have a
sunspot.  Dr. Gurman also mentioned checking magnetic maps of the
sun from the ground based GONG network, Global Oscillation Network
Group, at //gong.nso.edu/data/farside/, and animations of solar
magnetic activity at //soi.stanford.edu/data/full underscore
farside/.  What I currently see using these tools is very little
magnetic activity.  Also commenting on KI6HPO was Jug, WA6MBZ of
Santa Barbara, California, who wrote, Until he died, we had an
American who had been an ATT employee who retired the moved to San
Quentin, Mexico, about 250 miles below the US Mexican border.  Every
year for many years during the summer months etc, he would come on
the Santa Barbara repeater on 146R790 MHz.  He knew when the signal
level was right and therefore when he could get into our repeater
with a usable signal.  Our repeater is located on a hill near the
beach called the Mesa.  It is at about 400 feet above sea level.  He
could not get into our other repeaters that were located up at about
4,000 feet.  Sunspot numbers were 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, and 0 with a
mean of 0.  10R7 cm flux was 68R8, 69R2, 70, 70R4, 70R1, 69R8, and
70R9 with a mean of 69R9.  Estimated planetary A indices were 2, 3,
2, 6, 2, 2 and 2 with a mean of 2R7.  Estimated mid latitude A
indices were 1, 1, 0, 7, 1, 2 and 0 with a mean of 1R7‚

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