From SpaceWeather.com
Over the weekend, a magnetically reversed sunspot appeared in the sun’s northern hemisphere. Its high latitude and “backwards” magnetic polarity mark it as a member of the next solar cycle. Is Solar Minimum over? Not even close, but this development does suggest that Solar Cycle 25 is stirring.
From earthobservatory.nasa.gov:
Sunspot forecasters can distinguish old and new cycles by looking at two features of sunspots. The first feature is latitude. The first sunspots of a new cycle initially appear at high latitudes. As the cycle progresses, they begin appearing progressively closer to the solar equator. The second feature is polarity. Like the Earth, the Sun has a magnetic field, but the Sun’s field flips much more frequently than the Earth’s—usually at the peak of each sunspot cycle. The rapid flipping of the Sun’s magnetic pole affects the polarity of sunspots, helping scientists distinguish between sunspots belonging to different solar cycles.
