Is the Sun a Magnetic Rotator?

Abstract

MEASUREMENTS of the general (polar) magnetic field of the Sun¹ show that since September 1964 the Sun has behaved on average like a dipole with a negative field strength at the North Pole and an approximately equal positive field at the South Pole (the mean ranging from 0.5 to 1.0 G). But because of a bias toward the area of the negative polarity in the northern hemisphere, the net magnetic flux was on average negative most of the time; in this sense the Sun behaved like a “monopole”. There were large deviations from the mean, however; for example, sometimes both poles had a field of the same sign (in February–April 1965), and during the first half of 1964 the mean strength at the South Pole was zero.