The sun is quiet …. The sun is flat-lining ….. the sun is dead. ….. How often have we heard any of those words? Not just from amateur astronomers, sun gazers grumbling beneath their breath, oh no, right to the deep thinkers, the astro-physicists. Really? Yes Really!
But what exactly does all this mean? Me and you could be looking at the sun and see a few activities going on and get somewhat confused at the grumbles of the experts that the sun is inactive, dead even. We could well see a coronal mass ejection or a filament eruption or even Mercury saying hello to the sun as Venus smiles back her vixen smile.
To understand this anomaly we would have to pay close attention to the frowns and shifting eyes of the sun gazer himself. More specifically where his/her pointer is pointing at for hours on end. A specific sunspot with a specific ID (gamma beta) so close but still no cigar the awaited “delta” waiting for that particular sunspot to go gamma beta delta and deliver some healthy class M or class X flares.
That according to the serious astronomer is the difference between an active and a dead sun.
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