All Things Solar

Seems I'm having a bit of a Solar-oriented period at the moment. First I join the SPA Solar section, then I start trying to observe the Sun each day and do (at the very least) a sunspot count, then I create a section on my site for showing the results.

To top it off, last night on BBC4, I enjoyed a couple of programmes about the Sun — the edition of The Sky At Night was one of the most interesting I've seen in a long time, in particular I really liked Pete Lawrence's broken CD, screwdriver and cardboard box based device for observing the Sun's spectrum; I quite fancy building one myself.

And, finally, I read Ian Musgrave's blog entry about the solar minimum (which links to this article over at NASA). Although I knew it anyway it's still sort of nice to see that my current run of 0 sunspot counts is zero for a reason. I'm going to really enjoy starting at the bottom of the dip and working my way up.

No observation today though. I woke up to overcast skies and it's been raining since around 12:30. From the forecasts I've seen it'll be pretty much like this for the rest of the week.

File Under: Solar Observing, Sunspot Counts, Solar Minimum.