Aero-Terms!

Aero-Terms are designed to be a daily reminder of the terms, names, acronyms and explanations of the unique language that populates the aviation world. Aerospace, sport aviation, fixed wing, helo, you name it... it's all fair game.

Aero-Terms should serve as a quick but intriguing reminder of the terms you may use every day, or an introduction to an aspects of the Aero-World you may not yet be familiar with. ANN also encourages readers to go beyond the FMI link, and further research any intriguing terms.

Suggestions for future Aero-Terms are ALWAYS welcome, as are additions or discussion of the explanations given for each Aero-Term.

Hale's Polarity Law

An observational rule governing the direction of regions of strong magnetic fields on the Sun, which are grouped in pairs of opposite polarities. At any given time, the ordering of positive/negative regions with respect to the east-west direction (the direction of rotation) is the same in a given hemisphere, but is reversed from northern to southern hemispheres. This rule is named after George Hale who first established it. Shortly after his discovery, ongoing studies of the magnetic polarities of sunspot pairs by Hale and his collaborators revealed yet another intriguing pattern: from one sunspot cycle to the next, the magnetic polarities of sunspot pairs undergo a reversal in each hemisphere.

FMI: www.carli.de/slideshow/slide19.php