Moon and Sun
Dec. 5th, 2006 08:50 pmThe Sun fired off an X9 flare -- that's a big one, the biggest in a couple of years -- this morning. The neat thing is that this came from an old active region (first seen last month on the day of the Mercury transit) that has been clearly seen on the back of the Sun for the last couple of weeks and is just now coming round again; at the time of the flare, it hadn't even been numbered yet.
This evening, as I was waiting for the bus, the moon was hanging between the palm trees over the floodlights of the campus tennis court, round and golden-bright as a fresh dollar coin.
It would be nice if they let us put some solar instrumentation at the proposed lunar base. (To say more than that would get into some fairly unhappy politics and funding issues, so I won't.)
This evening, as I was waiting for the bus, the moon was hanging between the palm trees over the floodlights of the campus tennis court, round and golden-bright as a fresh dollar coin.
It would be nice if they let us put some solar instrumentation at the proposed lunar base. (To say more than that would get into some fairly unhappy politics and funding issues, so I won't.)
