2.5 years of Solar Cycle 25! Click to watch a movie of everything XRT saw during this time or
or click here for the youtube version.
2.5 years of Cycle 25 in 2.5 Minutes
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Although nothing of note has happened on Earth over the last 2.5 years, the Sun has gone through a stunning transformation. As we noted back in 2020, Solar cycle 25 offically began at the very end of 2019. This was the lowest point of activity on the Sun and the disk remained excruciatingly quiet for us Sun Watchers. Slowly but surely over the last two years, we have seen a steady increase in the amount of activity on the Sun as Cycle 25 starts to move into a more active phase. This means we see more active regions, more sunpsots, and more freqeuent and powerful solar flares. So far, Cycle 25 has exceeded expectations and has been more active than predicted. Watching through this video summary of the last 2.5 years, this sharp increase in activity across the Sun is obvious. The number of ARs increases dramatically and their average size increases as well. The images from this movie come from XRT's synoptic program, which takes twice daily full disk images of the Sun. This allows us to see the full progression of the Sun from super quiet to extremely active. It also provides some interesting insight into the pointing issue encountered in early 2022 that led to a data gap and a few frames of a slightly askew Sun. Let's hope that the next few years of Solar Cycle 25 continue to dazzle and impress us with an energetic and exciting Sun! Keywords: Solar Cycle, Full Disk Filters: Al_Poly |
(Prepared by Lucas Guliano)
The XRT instrument team is comprised of SAO, NASA, JAXA, and NAOJ.
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