Re-examining Sunspot Tilt Angle to Include Anti-Hale Statistics

TL;DR

This study re-examines sunspot tilt angles, including anti-Hale regions, using extensive observational data, revealing their distribution, characteristics, and impact on traditional classification and solar cycle analysis.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive analysis of anti-Hale sunspot tilt angles, including their distribution and size, using magnetogram data, and assesses their influence on solar cycle diagnostics.

Findings

Anti-Hale regions constitute about 8.4% of bipolar sunspot groups.

Anti-Hale tilt angles are broadly distributed between 0 and 360 degrees.

No size preference observed for anti-Hale sunspots.

Abstract

Sunspot groups and bipolar magnetic regions (BMRs) serve as an observational diagnostic of the solar cycle. We use Debrecen Photohelographic Data (DPD) from 1974-2014 that determined sunspot tilt angles from daily white light observations, and data provided by Li & Ulrich that determined sunspot magnetic tilt angle using Mount Wilson magnetograms from 1974-2012. The magnetograms allowed for BMR tilt angles that were anti-Hale in configuration, so tilt values ranged from 0 to 360{\deg} rather than the more common $\pm$ 90{\deg}. We explore the visual representation of magnetic tilt angles on a traditional butterfly diagram by plotting the mean area-weighted latitude of umbral activity in each bipolar sunspot group, including tilt information. The large scatter of tilt angles over the course of a single cycle and hemisphere prevents Joy's law from being visually identified in the tilt-butterfly diagram without further binning. The average latitude of anti-Hale regions does not differ from the average latitude of all regions in both hemispheres. The distribution of anti-Hale sunspot tilt angles are broadly distributed between 0 and 360{\deg} with a weak preference for east-west alignment 180{\deg} from their expected Joy's law angle. The anti-Hale sunspots display a log-normal size distribution similar to that of all sunspots, indicating no preferred size for anti-Hale sunspots. We report that 8.4% $\pm$ 0.8% of all bipolar sunspot regions are misclassified as Hale in traditional catalogs. This percentage is slightly higher for groups within 5{\deg} of the equator due to the misalignment of the magnetic and heliographic equators.