Yesterday, Alan Friedman of Buffalo, New York, looked through his solar telescope and actually felt sorry for the sun. "Seeing this solitary prominence, I imagined the sun experiencing a twinge of melancholia ... or perhaps it's my reaction to the seemingly endless solar minimum."

Image
© Alan Friedman
When Friedman took the picture on August 1st, the sun had just entered its 22nd consecutive day of spotlessness--no sunspots for more than three weeks! This is typical of 2009. So far this year, the sun has been blank 77% of the time, confirming the solar minimum of 2008-2009 as a century-class event.

But endless? No. Solar jet streams are beginning to stimulate new-cycle sunspot production--e.g., sunspot 1024 in early July. NOAA forecasters expect solar activity to intensify in late 2009-early 2010 leading to a new solar maximum in 2012-2013. If they're correct, soon, the lonely prominence will be a thing of the past.