How long is the solar cycle?

Answer 1

Our star, the Sun, flips its magnetic N and S poles roughly once every 11 years making a complete cycle (back to the start position) a 22 year event.

After the poles flip, the Sun enters a "quiet" phase during which there are very few sunspots (called a solar Minimum), while during the time the poles are flipping the number of sunspots increases (called a solar Maximum).

More on the process is obtainable form the related link below.

Answer 2

22 years. This is an average, it varies quite a lot from one cycle to the next. This is the magnetic cycle; twice per cycle there is a maximum of sunspots, so you will also find the solar cycle quoted as being around 11 years.

Answer 3

Sunspots, which are darker areas on the surface of the Sun, come and go in an 11-year cycle. We're not sure why there are sunspots, or why there is an 11-year cycle of sunspots, or why the cycle is sometimes longer or shorter than 11 years.

Some of the things that we DO know is that solar flares and coronal mass ejections from the Sun do seem to be correlated with sunspots. And there have been two fairly extended periods in the last 300 years when there were very few sunspots, and we're not sure whether or not there is a connection between the lack of sunspots and some extended periods of unusually cold weather. The spotless periods were called the "Maunder Minimum" and the "Dalton Minimum", and some scientists believe that fewer sunspots mean that the Sun itself is slightly less active.

You can see the daily sunspot number on the web at www.spaceweather.com.

Answer 4

Depending on how you define it, the current solar magnetic activity cycle has a period of about 11 years or about 22 years with an intermediate peak half-way through the cycle when magnetic polarity flips. With reference to the "11-year" cycle - cycles as short as 9 years and as long as 14 years have been observed, and in the double cycle of 1784-99 one of the two component cycles had to be less than 8 years in length.

Other longer-term cycles identified for the sun include:

• 87 years (70-100 years): Gleissberg cycle, named after Wolfgang Gleißberg (thought to be an amplitude modulation of the 11-year cycle)
• 210 years: Suess cycle (a.k.a. "de Vries cycle")
• 2,300 years: Hallstatt cycle
• 6000 years: unnamed but reported by Xapsos and Burke in 2009

Carbon-14 also shows some related cycles of 105, 131, 232, 385, 504, 805, and 2,241 years for solar activity. In prehistoric times (pre-Cambrian, ~250 million years ago) there is evidence in mineral deposits of cycles lasting approximately 2500 years.

Answer 5

Areas on the sun's surface that are cooler and less bright than surrounding areas, are caused by the Sun's magnetic field, and occur in cycles.

Sunspots at the equator take about 25 days to complete one rotation.

near the poles, they take about 35 days.

THey appear and disappear over a period of several days, weeks, or months.

The # of sunspots increases and decreases in a fairly regular pattern called the sunspot, or solar activity, cycle.

Times when many large sunspot occur called sunspot maximums.

Sunspot maximums occur about every 10 to 11 years.

Periods of sunspot minimum occur in between.
Sunspot cycle is the ration of the sun. This is what gives light.

Answer 6

22 years