Here is a composite image showing a putative equatorial "cold belt" in a static image.
http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/mt/assets/science/assets_c/2013/04/743348m ain_Timelapse_Sun_4k-1500-thumb-570x570-119711.jpg If this banding effect were merely an illusion based the earth's changing axis tilt, then there should be no cold belt at all due to averaging of viewpoints over time. Indeed, the belt seems to be more apparent in animation than in the composite but why is it there at all? Well, according to some sources, the sun's poles ... err ... one of the poles only... did not flip on the usual 11 year cycle, so essentially we may have had a sun with two south poles for a while. http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2012/04/23/unusual-magnetic-changes-in-the- sun-the-north-pole-of-the-sun-had-started-flipping-about-a-year-earlier-than -expected/ That would have played into the hands of the Mayan calendar folks, had there been a calamity, but there was none. At least not yet. Interesting video with implications worthy of comment, even if this is only an inverse kind of optical illusion. At least to my eyes, the major flare activity is not bunched at the equator of the sun but seems to be bunched in an irregular fashion near the latitudinal lines which would correspond to the "Tropics" on Earth - roughly 23.5 degrees North and South... but isn't this merely an illusion based on our line of sight, with ecliptic tilt providing a false illusion? But, then again, I am easily distracted by Dubstep. IOW the appearance of a "colder solar equator" could be because our line of site gives a false impression of where the activity occurs, especially in a time-lapse animation. The Earth's axis is tilted to the ecliptic (the plane of the sun) by that amount - 23.5 degrees, but of course - that tilt does not influence solar activity. The Earth is too small, comparatively. Since the suns axis itself does not tilt (ostensibly) we should logically not impose our relative position on the Sun, so to speak. OTOH the bunching angle seems less than 23.5 - closer to 15. But this is subjective. As the Earth orbits the sun, the direction and angle of the Earth's tilt is regular, so the sun appears to shift up and down the sky with the seasons. When a series of time lapsed images are run in sequence, then we could see an unexpected effect - but this only an optical illusion, and that is all that is going on? Possibly it is. However, there is "wobble" or nutation but not Chandler wobble. Isaac Newton predicted the existence of Earth's free nutation as far back as 1755 (called Chandler wobble now). If there is a strong Solar nutation, which would explain some of the optical illusion of a cold belt around the sun, then I have been unable to find good information on it. Most likely there is no cold equator, other than in the magical illusion of movies, so to speak... or maybe it is partly because of the Dubstep. Dub-da-dub-dub. In music, syncopation involves rhythms which are in some way unexpected. Maybe this is visual syncopation being quantum entangled with audible :-) Jones
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