(no subject)

Two views of my local "lake" -- actually the dam for an eighteenth-century water-powered factory, whose buildings can be seen in the background. One was taken on Monday, when it was sunny but quite windy (not nearly as bad as it was higher up, I gather) and there was a good chop on the dam; the other was taken yesterday when the water was as smooth as I've ever seen it.

What a difference a year makes!

Here's the Sun in 171 Angstroms today:



and here's how it looked a year ago:



That's the solar cycle (finally!) in action.

I've been spending a lot of time lately looking at data from very early in the life of SDO, when sunspots were few and far between, and it's startling to look at the current Sun -- now sporting the most sunspots so far this cycle -- and see how much things have changed.