Long-Term Measurements of Sunspot Magnetic Tilt Angles

TL;DR

This study analyzes long-term sunspot magnetic tilt angles using magnetogram data from 1974 to 2012, confirming Joy's law, Hale's law, and hemispheric asymmetries, revealing stable tilt patterns over time with some latitudinal and hemispheric variations.

Contribution

It provides the first extensive long-term measurements of sunspot tilt angles, highlighting their invariance over time and hemispheric asymmetries, and quantifying their relation to latitude and solar cycle.

Findings

Tilt angles increase with latitude following Joy's law.

Tilt angles are generally invariant over time at a given latitude.

Hemispheric asymmetry shows larger tilts in the southern hemisphere.

Abstract

Tilt angles of close to 30,600 sunspots are determined using Mount Wilson daily averaged magnetograms taken from 1974 to 2012, and MDI/SoHO magnetograms taken from 1996 to 2010. Within a cycle, more than 90% of sunspots have a normal polarity alignment along the east-west direction following Hale's law. The median tilts increase with increasing latitude (Joy's law) at a rate of ~0.5 degree per degree of latitude. Tilt angles of spots appear largely invariant with respect to time at a given latitude, but they decrease by ~0.9degree per year on average, a trend which largely reflects Joy's law following the butterfly diagram. We find an asymmetry between the hemispheres in the mean tilt angles. On average, the tilts are greater in the southern than in the northern hemisphere for all latitude zones, and the differences increase with increasing latitude.