Nearby Star Could Help Explain Sunspot Mystery That Has Baffled Scientists for 300 Years
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Nearby Star Could Help Explain Sunspot Mystery That Has Baffled Scientists for 300 Years:
The number of sunspots on our sun typically ebbs and flows in a predictable 11-year cycle, but one unusual 70-year period when sunspots were incredibly rare has mystified scientists for 300 years. Now a nearby sun-like star seems to have paused its own cycles and entered a similar period of rare starspots, according to a team of researchers at Penn State. Continuing to observe this star could help explain what happened to our own sun during this "Maunder Minimum" as well as lend insight into the sun's stellar magnetic activity, which can interfere with satellites and global communications and possibly even affect climate on Earth.
The star - and a catalog of 5 decades of starspot activity of 58 other sun-like stars - is described in a new paper that appears online in the Astronomical Journal.
Starspots appear as a dark spot on a star's surface due to temporary lower temperatures in the area resulting from the star's dynamo - the process that creates its magnetic field. Astronomers have been documenting changes in starspot frequency on our sun since they were first observed by Galileo and other astronomers in the 1600s, so there is a good record of its 11-year cycle. The exception is the Maunder Minimum, which lasted from the mid-1600s to early 1700s and has perplexed astronomers ever since.
"We don't really know what caused the Maunder Minimum, and we have been looking to other sun-like stars to see if they can offer some insight," said Anna Baum, an undergraduate at Penn State at the time of the research and first author of the paper. "We have identified a star that we believe has entered a state similar to the Maunder Minimum. It will be really exciting to continue to observe this star during, and hopefully as it comes out of, this minimum, which could be extremely informative about the sun's activity 300 years ago."
Journal Reference:
Anna C. Baum, Jason T. Wright, Jacob K. Luhn and Howard Isaacson, Five Decades of Chromospheric Activity in 59 Sun-like Stars and New Maunder Minimum Candidate HD 166620" , Astronomical Journal, DOI: 10.3847/1538-3881/ac5683
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