Geomagnetic Summary for 2020

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Carbon60
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Geomagnetic Summary for 2020

Post by Carbon60 »

Hi all,

Over the past year I've recorded my local geomagnetic activity levels continuously on my PC. Here's every data point (all 209,900 of them) in red and a smoothed plot in blue which shows the ebb and flow over the months.
Geomagnetic Summary 2020.jpg
Geomagnetic Summary 2020.jpg (183.72 KiB) Viewed 639 times
Being still relatively quiet, the main activity comes from holes that open up in the solar atmosphere (so called Coronal Holes) which allow the solar wind to flow outward at fast speeds (typically 500-600 km/s). As these winds reach Earth the charged particles from which the wind is comprised (and associated magnetic fields carried by the wind), interact with our own magnetic field in a way that can be detected as tiny movements on a compass needle here at ground level. My detector is an electronic version of a compass needle which uses a fluxgate magnetic sensor located in my back garden and is connected via an interface module to my PC.

My data show that generally the Sun has been pretty quiet from a geoeffective standpoint over the first half of 2020, with a temporary ramp up during August and September (leading to the Autumnal equinox). Additionally, a periodicity appears to have developed over these and subsequent months to December resulting from a persistent coronal hole that has lasted so far at least five solar rotations.

As cycle 25 continues to build, we should see coronal mass ejections (CMEs) showing up more prominently in the data. It will be interesting to see how the plot changes year on year.

Thanks for looking.

Stu.


H-alpha, WL and Ca II K imaging kit for various image scales.
Fluxgate Magnetometers (1s and 150s Cadence).
Radio meteor detector.
More images at http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarcarbon60/
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Re: Geomagnetic Summary for 2020

Post by Montana »

A very definite uptick in activity recently and like a beating heart too. We had a flat line till August :shock: and it looks like it is starting to diminish again by December, I hope that this isn't the case, it needs to start beating again!

Alexandra


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rsfoto
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Re: Geomagnetic Summary for 2020

Post by rsfoto »

Hi Stu,

Great info. Setting up a station like that is I guess more difficult then a Radio Meteor Observation station :shock:


regards Rainer

Observatorio Real de 14
San Luis Potosi Mexico

North 22° West 101°
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Carbon60
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Re: Geomagnetic Summary for 2020

Post by Carbon60 »

rsfoto wrote: Mon Jan 04, 2021 5:06 pm Hi Stu,

Great info. Setting up a station like that is I guess more difficult then a Radio Meteor Observation station :shock:
Hi Rainer,

There’s a bit of basic electronic circuit building to do and setting up the sensor in a waterproof housing underground to maintain a constant temperature. At the computer end the interface module also needs to be kept at a constant temperature, so yes it’s quite a bit of work to get all of this in place. On top of that, the local magnetic environment has to be free from any interference so that the system can detect the minute changes caused by space weather. Getting all of this right can be somewhat of a challenge :lol:

Stu.


H-alpha, WL and Ca II K imaging kit for various image scales.
Fluxgate Magnetometers (1s and 150s Cadence).
Radio meteor detector.
More images at http://www.flickr.com/photos/solarcarbon60/
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Re: Geomagnetic Summary for 2020

Post by marktownley »

Fascinating data Stu!


Image
http://brierleyhillsolar.blogspot.co.uk/
Solar images, a collection of all the most up to date live solar data on the web, imaging & processing tutorials - please take a look!
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