Our Sun is in the news again for the eerie quiet.

Our Sun is in the news again for the eerie quiet.

From eHam.net April 3, 2009

Excerpts include:
"The Sun is surprisingly calm by several measurements -- including the large number of spotless days -- average 10.7 cm solar flux, and low solar wind pressure."

"we are witnessing a 50-year low in solar wind pressure -- a 20-percent drop since the mid 1990s. Of course the advantage to this is geomagnetic storms are very rare. But that is a disadvantage for VHF operators who enjoy using aurora to propagate radio waves."

"The news release at http://tinyurl.com/czphz7 claims that 10.7 cm solar flux is at a 55-year low, although this figure has only been tracked for the past 65 or so years. They also tell us that 2008 had more spotless days than any year since 1913 (see http://tinyurl.com/cwfddc)."