English

Low-Latitude Sunspot Group Tilt Angles in 15-24 Activity Cycles

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics 2025-09-24 v1

Abstract

An analysis of the tilt angles of the active regions in 15-24 activity cycles was performed. We used data from measurements of magnetic fields in the sunspot umbra in the period 1918 -2019 at the Mount Wilson Observatory, as well as the tilt angles of active regions in 'white' light at the Kodaikanal and Mount Wilson observatories in activity cycles 15-21. The mean tilt angles of active regions γ\overline{\gamma} and the slope μ\mu from latitude θ\theta in the activity cycles are considered. Low-latitude bipoles are the most important in predicting the strength of solar cycles. In this work, we selected the cutoff latitude θcut\theta_{cut} at which the highest correlation is observed with the strength of the next activity cycle for active regions with latitude θ<θcut\theta<\theta_{cut}. It was found that for magnetic field measurement data, the highest correlation of the parameters γ\overline{\gamma} and μ\mu with the strength of the next solar activity cycle is characteristic of bipoles in the equatorial zone with θ<θcut14.2o\theta<\theta_{cut}\approx 14.2^o. For white light observation data, θcut8.5o\theta_{cut}\approx 8.5^o for Mount Wilson observatory and θcut9.4o\theta_{cut}\approx 9.4^o for Kodaikanal observatory.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2509.19217,
  title  = {Low-Latitude Sunspot Group Tilt Angles in 15-24 Activity Cycles},
  author = {Andrey Tlatov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.19217},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

11 pages, 4 figures, 2 tables