Warren de la Rue, Balfour Stewart and Benjamin Loewy: Planetary Influence on Solar Activity

Posted: November 6, 2012 by tallbloke in Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cycles, Electro-magnetism, Energy, Forecasting, Natural Variation, Solar physics, solar system dynamics, Tides
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I came across this old paper, which may turn out to be very important. Balfour Stewart was head of solar research at Kew Observatory in the latter part of the C19th. This study demonstrates an effect of the planets on the size of sunspots, which may be connected with gravitationl, tidal and electro-magnetic forces interactions operating in the heliosphere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Click on the plot above for a larger image

 

 

 

 

Comments
  1. tchannon says:
    November 6, 2012 at 3:04 pm

    This would not surprise me, the general subject being one I have partial followed, why I have an interest in the detail sunspot data.

    I have more important things on the agenda. If I can help over decoding the only obvious source of data, ask. This is the Greenwich/NASA/Hathaway dataset. The contents are inconsistent hence decode tends to be a problem.

    This is the data where processing asymetry produced a dataset with missing 11 year cycle, a dominant 45 year and a large 8 or 9 year (I don’t recall which). Strange stuff. How valid any particular interpretation might be is open.
    The 45y leads sea level and satellite temperature, it will not though look like a simple function over longer timespan.