Mele Kalikimaka!

Best Wishes from the faculty, students, and staff of the Mees Solar Observatory and the Solar Group at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaii. May your holidays breakout in joy and the new year vigorously brighten your life.

The Dark Days of Solar Minimum are Over!

After years of steady decline, solar activity is now rapidly rising. Following the sudden breakout this past summer, we look forward to years of vigorous activity. The lowest level of solar activity occurred in late 1996 but the rapid advance of activity begins in June 1997.

The butterfly diagram of solar activity for the interval October 18, 1995 to December 1, 1997 uses images from the Mees Solar Observatory K-Line telescope to show the excess Ca II K-line emission, averaged over longitude, for each day. The vertical direction corresponds to sine(latitude) over the latitude range +/-80 degrees. The graph shows the total excess flux in the active latitudes.