Long-term north–south asymmetry of the heliospheric current sheet

Abstract In this paper, we evaluate the heliospheric current sheet (HCS) north–south asymmetry using the ecliptical sector structure of the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) reconstructed since the second half of the 19th century. During the last five solar cycles, the inferred IMF polarities fairly reproduce the observed dominance of the sectors with the polarity of the northern solar hemisphere, i.e., the prolonged southward shift of the HCS. For the presatellite era, we found that the northward shift of the HCS was more common in cycles 10, 15, and 17–19, and the southward HCS shift was more common in cycles 9, 11–14, and 16. We also analyzed the north–south asymmetry in sunspot group numbers since 1749 and found that the northern hemisphere dominated in cycles 2–3, 7–9, and 15–20, and the southern hemisphere activity was stronger in cycles 4, 9–14, and 21–24. Moreover, other solar phenomena bear similar long-term asymmetry variations. The regularity of these variations is not clear. According to the available proxies of the solar data, the dominance of the northern hemisphere is found in the ascending phase of the secular solar cycle, and the dominance of the southern hemisphere coincides with the descending phase

Sunspot observations at the Eimmart observatory:revision and supplement

Abstract Digital images of sunspot drawings of the archives of Georg Christoph Eimmart stored at the National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg, are analyzed to obtain sunspot-group numbers and sunspot areas as well as heliographic positions. Overall, more than a hundred drawings were processed. The impact of drawing and reproduction uncertainties and the aims of historical observations are considered. The sunspot positions are compared to those reported by contemporary observers of the Maunder minimum. The restored sunspot-group numbers and latitudes are compared to those extracted by Hoyt and Schatten (Solar Phys. 179, 189, 1998) as well as Hayakawa et al. (Solar Phys. 296, 154, 2021b) and Hayakawa et al. (Astrophys. J. 909, 166, 2021d). The persistence of long-lived sunspots over several solar rotations is discussed