Do sunspots – those huge bursts of solar energy that screw up our communications satellites, glitch our cell phones, and entertain us with Vegas-style Northern Lights – originate at around the same area on the sun every time? In other words, can sun spots pop up just any old place on the sun, or are they unique to specific locations?
AND (on the same general topic) if we know a solar storm is on the way, can we save our electronics goodies by shutting them down and taking the batteries out before the storm hits? Sorta like nailing plywood over the windows before the Cat 5 hurricane blows into town and rips the roof off?
RaineyCat, protecting her toys from vicious celestial assaults
Sunspots are not huge bursts of solar energy that screws up satellites. Those are solar flares and coronal mass ejections.
I’m not an astronomer, but I think the Sun is pretty much the same all over, except for rotation. And since flares and ejections are linked to magnetic events, and the chaotic magnetic field of the sun is caused by the different rotational speed at different latitudes, my WAG is that the poles are less active and that other than that sun spots and flares can show up anywhere.
Correct. However, flares and CMEs generally occur at solar active regions, and there are usually sunspots at the core of active regions. A sunspot is actually a bundle of magnetic fields protruding from the surface (photosphere), and those magnetic fields are believed to transport energy into the sun’s atmosphere, where it is released in explosive events.
In other words, if there is a cluster of large sunspots on the sun, we’re much more likely to see a flare or CME.
They can pop up at any longitude, but large active regions can remain for several months, producing a number of explosive events.
There is a preferential latitude sunspots appear. At the beginning of the 11-year cycle, sunspots tend to be around 30 degrees latitude (both north and south), but towards the end of the cycle, they tend to appear closer to the equator. See here and click on the “butterfly diagram” to see the plot.
Electronics on the Earth’s surface are not affected by solar storms because the earth’s atmosphere and magnetic field are very effective at blocking high-energy particles. A solar storm can cause fluctuations in the earth’s magnetic field, which can induces a current in very long metal objects, like transmission lines and oil pipelines, but I think they have protective features these days.
Electronics on a spacecraft are a different matter, as spacecraft have much less shielding than the Earth. A charged particle can generate an erroneous signal in electronics, causing it to misbehave. You can avoid this by turning it off beforehand. But charged particles can also cause physical damage to semiconductors, and you can’t avoid that by keeping the power off during a solar storm.
There really isn’t even such a thing as “the same place on the Sun”. The Sun is fluid, and different parts of it rotate at different rates. If you plant two flags next to each other on the Sun, they won’t stay next to each other.
That said, most solar activity is mostly concentrated near the equator, which more-or-less lines up with the plane the Earth and other planets more-or-less orbit in.
As the sun rotates, the center equator surface rotates faster twisting the magnetic field like an over-tightened elastic band. Loops pop up on the surface, cooler than the surrounding area and so appearing black. As you can see from the diagram, they first appear (randomly) toward the higher latitudes and become more numerous and more equatorial until the magnetic field flips (about every 11 years) and starts over again.
Oddly, this cycle is the slowest and quietest since 1906, meaning we are likely in for a cold decade if the Maunder and other theories are true.