Project\'s diary

Today this year’s largest group of sunspots will cross the Sun’s central meridian. The group, registered as number 1019 in the international NOAA catalogue, was literally formed before astronomers’ eyes several days ago on the visible side of the Sun. The first two spots appeared on the Sun’s surface on May 31st. The next day, the number of spots in the group reached five, and the day after, on June 2nd, it was possible to count thirteen sunspots on solar disk, which had been clear prior to this. All of the spots fitted into an area with a lateral dimension of less than 100 thousand kilometers.

Specialists from the TESIS Control Centre, at the FIAN Laboratory of Solar X-ray Astronomy, have succeeded in fixing a malfunction in one of the observatory’s central telescopes, which occurred in the second half of May. The first malfunctions in the operation of the Gershel x-ray telescope were logged on 10 May, 2009. The Gershel telescope was observing the corona and the transition layer of the Sun at a wavelength of 171 and 304 A.

The Russian TESIS/ CORONAS-PHOTON Solar Observatory, which has been working in orbit since January 30th, 2009, has photographed one of the most important events in the build up to the upcoming solar cycle – the formation of our star’s new southern belt of activity. The first magnetic fields of the new cycle in the southern hemisphere appeared on the Sun’s surface on May 23-24th. The emerged areas have a typical NS-configuration, i.e. they have fields of opposing polarities, positioned along the line of solar latitude. Predictably, fields with positive polarity are displaced to the West along the entire southern belt, and negative fields are displaced to the East. Therefore, polarity reversal of magnetic fields has occurred in the Sun’s southern hemisphere, and a new magnetic configuration has been formed, which will now remain intact for the whole future cycle.