The High-Latitude Sunspot Group of May 1943

On May 16, 1943, a sunspot group (Mount Wilson No. 7579) appeared in an unusually high southern latitude (frontispiece) . At the present phase in the sunspot cycle, which is about one year before minimum, a few sunspots may be expected in high latitudes. Such spots belong to the new 11-year cycle which usually begins a year or two before the old cycle ends. There is seldom any uncertainty about the cycle to which individual spots belong because those of the new cycle are much farther from the solar equator than those of the waning cycle and because their magnetic polarities are opposite to those of the old-cycle spots in the same hemisphere. The positions and areas of the high-latitude group of May 1943 for the first three days after its appearance were: