Post #5000

This is it, and I don't have much to say except thank you to my regular readers and to everyone who stops by.  Since Blogger tells us the number of the post, I've known this has been coming for quite a while and have been counting down for a while. You regular readers will have noticed I tend to put up one post a day, so a thousand posts takes about three years. My 4000th post was on Halloween 2021, so 2-1/2 months shy of three years.  

Among the interesting things in the "what else is going on?" thread is the sun's magnetic field looks to have reversed, a sure sign that the present solar cycle has peaked. Solar flux and smoothed sunspot numbers aren't likely to change right away, but it's a sign of being at solar maximum. This is from the latest video by Scott McIntosh who did the single best prediction of this solar cycle's activity and has apparently left the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) for the private sector.  The video says he's VP of Space Operations from Lynker Space, and they appear to be starting a space weather forecasting service.

The part of this plot that shows the reversal is on the right, in the red ellipse,and you can see the north polar field (in gray) going south behind the south polar field (in ... not gray). 

By the way, you'll hear people talking about the sun's poles flipping. "Flipping" brings to mind those amazing Olympic gymnasts. It's not that dramatic, and nowhere near that fast. Reversing is a better word because it brings to mind putting a car in reverse and moving cautiously (slowly). You can see it takes from the left edge of the plot in 2010 until 2016 for the south pole field to get as far south as it goes. The Reversals are in late 2013 and mid 2024 close enough to 11 years to sound like what we call a solar cycle - which is one half of the real 22 year solar cycle.

EDIT Aug. 17 1826 EDT to correct:  Of all things to forget, I went and found an image for the number 5000 and completely forgot to put in the post.