After weeks of little or no sunspots, it is nice to have something to report: Following multiple false starts, quick-fading spots and knots of magnetic activity that never progressed into actual darkened sunspots, new sunspot group 1017 emerged on Wednesday, May 13. The daily sunspot number was 12; the next day the size of the group approximately doubled, raising the sunspot number to 18. This is a Solar Cycle 24 sunspot group. A week ago, we expected active regions spotted by the STEREO mission would emerge into sunspots over the weekend, but like many others in the recent past, they faded away. The new sunspot this week emerged a few days later.
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