Indian scientists reconstruct past polar magnetic behaviour of Sun

New Delhi: Despite nearly continuous tracking of solar activity since 1859, scientists have not able to decipher the mysterious rhythms of the Sun, the patterns by which solar activity including sunspots, flares and magnetic storms wax and wane. There are multiple overlapping cycles in periods ranging from a few to thousands of years, with the most well-understood one being the 11-year long Schwabe cycle . One of the key pieces in understanding and predicting solar activity is the polar magnetic field, which influences each solar cycle.

Direct measurements of the polar magnetic fields of the Sun only began in the 1970s. For the major part of the last century, humans have very little information on the polar field of the Sun. Researchers from the Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observa