I have been an amateur astronomer since I was a kid.
When I was 14 I wrote a little article about Sunspots and
presented it in high school and at the astronomy course I took.
They are back,
Cycle 24 of the Sunspots started this year.
They are historically correlated with temperature on Earth,
and they provide most of our solar radiation.
They have almost a cycle of 11 years and cycle 23 ended in 2008.
New spots showed up in January but not a lot
and in October 2008 more appeared, and that is very good.
They are colder than the Sun's photosphere,
I like to think of them as a coagulation floating on it.
Without them we wouldn't be able to predict space weather
and we would have a colder Earth, and maybe another Ice Age since
solar radiance received by the Earth is affected by sunspot activity.
The Little Ice Age
(Sporer, Maunder, and Dalton from 1450 to 1820 )
was related to the fact that the Sun had a decrease number or no Sunspots...
So, yay! for the new cycle...
I know, I'm a nerd
but at least I am cute
=P
