Intersection Logs

No SDO launch today; too windy. They went to the end of the 1-hour window, "GO, GO, GO ..." and then aborted one second into the four-minute countdown. Tomorrow should be less windy, but cloudier. We'll see.

Nearly half an inch so far this morning. About a quart in the receptacle under the drip in my bedroom between 6 and 9am. Two dreams in which leaks were bursting out all over the ceiling and I was running around trying to catch the water.

No Shuttle launch this morning, so no SDO launch on Tuesday. Two M-class flares yesterday; it's past time we got that thing up there and working!

I seem to have survived my first day at the AGU, including giving the invited talk which was the main reason I'm here in the first place.

So the question may be, has the Sun actually been behaving oddly since the turn of the millennium, or is it just that the Space Age and the start of modern observations coincided with a period of unusually high activity which is now reverting to normal? (As soon as we figure out what normal is anyway.) This reminds me rather of the theory I've heard somewhere, that the American West was colonized during an abnormally wet period that set up unrealistic expectations for how much water would be available long-term.

I spent the lunch break wandering around the Yerba Buena gardens, a quiet little oasis of grass and trees and water in the midst of a precipitous concrete-and-glass desert. It was disconcerting to see magnolia and azalea flowers in December; mind you, they did look rather as though they were regretting it. It wasn't very warm, and afterwards the only time I felt warm enough to take off my jacket all afternoon was when I had just had a cup of hot coffee. (I was very relieved that there was hot coffee; the AGU has a habit of serving only beer (and maybe soda) for the afternoon breaks.)

This page last updated on September 15, 2009 at 15:19 P.D.T. Observatory weather: clear but with local smoke; winds calm; 68 degrees F.
Most current magnetograph data: 15-Sep-2009.



Today, for the first time since August 28, the 150-foot solar tower at Mount Wilson -- the one with the famous webcam on top -- observed the Sun. (Yesterday was very foggy.)

The Sun was very boring, as it has been for a while now, but that may be about to change.

In spite of the proclaimed success of the controlled burn last week, the section of the fire perimeter from Mount Wilson to the Cogswell Reservoir is the only bit officially marked "not controlled." No-one seems to be very worried, though. The official containment date was to have been today, but they put it back because of the hold-ups last week, and it now stands at 91% contained, still smoking and smouldering in places.

It's been a busy day on Mount Wilson. There was a lot of smoke on the webcam from early morning, and a LOT of smoke by lunchtime. After lunch someone put up a proper mirror of the poor oversubscribed webcam; about an hour later the observatory went offline. The director was ready for this and evacuated his blog to Georgia State; apparently most of the smoke was from backfires set by firefighters who were back on the mountain, and they think one of the backfires took out the internet connection. Mid-afternoon there was much excitement over a big water-drop, which I managed to miss despite juggling three or four live video feeds -- one of which cut away to NASA TV just as things were getting interesting.

Cautious optimism, I think.

Active region 11024, currently visible on the Sun, may be the closest thing to a real active region we've seen yet in the new solar cycle; the leading spot has a penumbra and everything! It's even managed a couple of C-class (aka, feeble but noticeable) flares in the last couple of days, the first we've seen in months.

This claim that an upcoming surge in solar activity has been predicted by crop circle, however, had my colleagues and me boggling and rolling our eyes. It's a very nice crop circle, but who comes up with these things?

The little dipole is still there,
though it doesn't look to be getting any bigger or to have much chance of qualifying for a number. I'm intrigued by the old-cycle dipole about fifteen degrees due south; as it happens, I stumbled across a paper just this evening that was commenting on that kind of thing happening at the last solar minimum, too. Meanwhile, the big patch of old-cycle activity, 10978, has been popping off a few baby flares, the first in a few months, just to prove that Cycle 23 isn't quite over yet.

It's not the "coronasphere", it's just the corona, not to be confused with the chromosphere. Also, it involves hard X-rays, gamma rays, and high-speed particles, not just the sort of UV you could get on the beach.

(Yes, I started watching the second season DVDs.)

SXI, that is.

The solar monitor site once more has a full complement of images.

There isn't much going on at the moment -- it's the tail end of the solar cycle, after all. It's still nice to know that the satellite is back on the job; one gets attached.