do sunspots appear on the sun during an 11 year cycle? True of False?

Answer 1

The term 'solar cycle' refers to a cycle of how active the Sun is and has a period of 11 years. It is thought that the luminosity, (or how bright the Sun is) may vary with this, and since all the energy on the Earth comes from the Sun, this could have a big effect on our climate.

Sunspots come in pairs. One is like the North pole of a magnet and the other like the South pole. They are often also arranged in groups. Scientists count the number of subspots using a "sunspot number" which takes into account the resolution of your telescope and other factors which might impact the number of sunspots a given observer would count on the Sun. This is explained further at http://spaceweather.com which also gives a daily update of the sunspot number and pictures of the disk of the Sun. The largest sunspot number recorded seems to be about 200, which means (roughly) that you would have seen about 14 individual sunspots using a moderate sized telescope to project an image of the Sun. As I said above the numbers vary on about an 11 year cycle. On 2000 we happened to be quite near the time when there are the largest numbers seen... today we are at what is called the solar minimum so today the solar spot number is very very small (<10) so at about 2011 we should see again maximum numbers of sun spots.

Answer 2

Sunspot activity cycles about every eleven years. The point of highest sunspot activity during this cycle is known as Solar Maximum (Solar Max for short), and the point of lowest activity is Solar Minimum (Solar Min). At the start of a cycle, sunspots tend to appear in the higher latitudes and then move towards the equator as the cycle approaches maximum: this is called Spörer's law.

Answer 3

if you mean to ask "do sunspots seem to follow an 11 year cycle, then yes. every eleven years the sun's surface seems to get more violent and there are more sunspots, however even at the low point of that 11 year cycle there still usually are some sunspots on the sun

Answer 4

Jupiter may be the largest planet of the solar system, but the sun in relation is overwhelming. the suns activity cycle is a highly sun-internal thing having much to do with the suns magnetic field and how matter flows within the sun. there might be a relation between jupiter and the sun which will trigger some matter to move somewhere, but i doubt the effect to be strong enough to be the only key to the suns activity. was there something special when jupiter and saturn pulled on the same side a decade ago ? i think no

Answer 5

Sunspots increase and decrease over a cycle, but there are almost always some sunspots that can be seen.

Answer 6

True, but that is a terribly-worded question.

There are sunspots on the sun all the time...and there is an 11 year cycle to their activity level.

Answer 7

yes only if the sun stays out in the sun for too long