 Greetings and welcome to the Astronomy Picture of the Day podcast. Today's picture for December 11th of 2023 is titled Solar Minimum vs. Solar Maximum. So, what do we see here? Well, let's zoom in and take a look. And what we see is that we're going to be looking at a video here. Now the video is going to show the activity of the Sun at Solar Minimum as compared to Solar Maximum. And you see in the still shot here on the left is Solar Minimum and on the right is Solar Maximum. So, let's go ahead and play the video and let's watch what we see here. And here we see it going and what we see is the rotating Sun. And as that occurs we see the differences between the two sides here, between what is going on on the left and what is going on on the right. And on the left we see the Sun near Solar Minimum and you see there's very little activity going on there. You can see a little bit in terms of prominences and material bulging out and coming out from different brighter areas which are the higher active areas. And you'll see most of it is very, very calm, not a whole lot going on. And you can see the big difference when you compare this to what we see on the right-hand side. On the right-hand side there is constant activity and in fact two bands of activity, one north of the equator and one south of the Sun's equator. And we see the material there being pushed out from the surface of the Sun, the plasma being lifted off by the Sun's magnetic field. Now, what do we mean by Solar Minimum and Solar Maximum? Well, that is a difference in the activity level of the Sun. And when we're at Solar Minimum the Sun is very inactive and very calm. When we're at Solar Maximum the Sun is very energetic and giving off a lot more things like solar flares that we see and that can affect us here on Earth. The solar cycle lasts about eleven years on average. So from one Solar Minimum to the next Solar Minimum, roughly eleven years. And then in between those you would get a Solar Maximum of activity. And right now we're coming out of the Solar Minimum and approaching Solar Maximum in another year or two. So this Sun is starting to become more and more active. A couple years ago it was much like we saw here on the left and a couple years from now it'll be as we see it on the right. And we will be getting far more activity. Now how do we see that activity here on Earth? Well those solar flares will affect us here on Earth because they send out streams of charged particles. Now we're protected from those charged particles by our magnetic field. It buffers most of them away. So most of them just get buffeted around Earth and head out into space. Some will travel along those magnetic field lines and will strike Earth where the magnetic field lines come into Earth's atmosphere. And that is near the North and South magnetic poles. That gives us what we see as the aurora. And the more active the Sun is so closer to Solar Maximum we will see far more aurora. Now that doesn't mean we don't see them at Solar Minimum. As we noted in the video there are occasions when we do get some activity even at Solar Minimum just far less than we do at Maximum. So we can expect far more aurora over the coming years and we can also expect to see them at lower latitudes. So typically they're only visible at very high latitudes. We will begin to see them at much lower latitudes because of the intensity of the solar flares will deform the Earth's magnetic field making that aurora visible a little bit farther south. So that was our picture of the day for December 11th of 2023. It was titled Solar Minimum vs. Solar Maximum. We'll be back again tomorrow for the next picture. So until then, have a great day everyone and I will see you in class.