Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

Abstract If we introduce a 37-year delay between planetary positions and sunspot data, it becomes clear that planetary alignments are an important cause of the variability of sunspot activity. This delay is caused by the time it takes for the solar plasma to plunge towards the tachocline and reach the sunspot-producing latitudes. The results are strongly dependent on the magnetic orientation of the Sun, so we must study separately the even and odd cycles. When the Sun is oriented South, 37 years before an odd cycle, there is a good connection with the North-oriented Jupiter’s field, and the alignments of Jupiter with Saturn, Uranus or Neptune coincide with large sunspot numbers later. When the Sun is oriented North, the interaction with Jupiter generates a quadrupole field and we observe that quadratures between Jupiter and Uranus or Neptune may enhance sunspot activity. The solar system thus acts as a dynamo whose rotor is the Sun and stator is the variable positions of the four large planets.

In the original version of article [Publ. Astron. Soc. Japan (2024) 76(2); https://doi.org/10.1093/pasj/psae010], the email address was incorrectly typed during the production process. The PDF and HTML versions of the original article are updated with the correct email address upon the publication of this erratum.