There’s been a little discussion about the plage area that came around the solar rim in the last two days, and now it appears that it has formed a spot. (h/t to Leif Svalgaard)

  Click for full sized image

Note that other similar sized black “specks” on the image are stuck pixels in the SOHO imager.

The question now is: how long will the sunspeck last? Longevity has not been a virtue for similarly sized sunspecks this year.

Jan Janssens has an interesting discussion on it (h/t to John-x)

4 October 08 - There is a new sunspotgroup visible on the southern solar hemisphere (as already reported yesterday by Pete Lawrence on the Spaceweather-website).

Belgian solar observers saw earlier this morning at least one sunspot clearly in this region.

Interestingly, Locarno (07:15 UT ; Q=2) and SIDC/Ukkel (07:45 UT ; Q=2?) did not report anything just a few hours earlier… Kanzelhöhe (09:03UT) did notice a bipolar group.

My own observations (C8, 68x) do not show “clearly” a B-group: a clear Axx for sure, but if there’s still something there, it rather looks like a small photospheric region imbedded in somewhat brighter faculae fields… A greyish pore at most (at least around 8:30UT, with Q=3 and some cirrus). The region is also very nice in H-alpha: 3 closely packed and relatively bright small areas, with some dark fibrils in the neighbourhood.

GONG-images also show the group. NSO-magnetograms clearly reflect an overnight enhancement of the magnetic fields in this region. The polarity is that of a SC23-group… at a latitude of at least -20°… This can possibly still be a high latitude SC23-group. Late June 1997, NOAA 8056 -with SC22-polarity- appeared with a latitude of +17°. See SOHO for magnetogram, and Kanzelhöhe for a drawing. The nearby group is NOAA 8055, a SC23-group (= new cycle) at +15°! And this happened more than a year after cycle minimum and the start of SC23. I have no magnetograms of earlier SC-transits to evaluate how exceptional or common all this is. At least this is a new element for discussion!

http://users.telenet.be/j.janssens/Engwelcome.html

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