Finally! A real sunspot

They've finally seen a real sunspot again this week! SOLARCYCLE 24.com has pics, including the one at right. That bright patch in the upper right quarter is the sunspot. Other filters show it as a dark spot. Last time we saw a real sunspot (not some anomally that can't be seen in the visual wavelengths, but that is being counted anyway) was June 23rd. Call it 92 days.

Of course the official number is much smaller, because of the Nothings they called a sunspot in July and early September. Either way, though, we don't beat the 95 day sunspot free stretch of 1913.

The interesting thing to be seen is what happens to the climate if this continues. The maunder minimum was a 70 year period with very few sunspots visible that just happened to be coincide with the Little Ice Age. Will we have another little ice age? Make a guess - in my opinion, it's unlikely that you'll do better or worse than most climatologists. I wonder if Al Gore has a slide show ready for the perils of glacial advance?

Lunar Eclipse

Be sure to watch the lunar eclipse tommorrow night, if skies are clear! Astonomy says it will be a total lunar eclipse, and it reaches totality at a reasonable hour, to boot! In the Milwaukee -Chicago area, it reaches totality at around 9pm. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for clear skies. I don't think the girl has seen a lunar eclipse before, and with totality at 9pm, she can easily catch it this time.

(Thanks to Anton_Mathee for the photo)

Galazy Zoo

The Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) is recording images of a large portion of the sky that will eventually encompass a million galaxies. With such a large number of galaxies, astronomers can finally begin to understand how they form and evolve by comparing various populations to each other with large enough numbers to draw real conclusions about their origin.


The problem? Each of these galaxies needs to be identified as either a sprial or an eliptical galaxy, in order to derive the relationships which the survey seeks. And there are some jobs that computers just aren't up to yet. Or at least, getting a computer to perform them requires ridiculous amounts of processing power. Among these is the determination of whether a galaxy is spiral or not, and whether a spiral galaxy appears to be rotating clockwise or counter-clockwise.

So, they're asking for our help. Sign up at Galaxy Zoo, run through the training images, take a short (15 question) test to prove that you've been paying attention, and start digging into the images. Some of them are amazing. I snagged the pic for this post from one that I was asked to categorize. I'm sure the best are still ahead. And don't worry that you'll make a mistake and screw up the project. Each of these images is reviewed multiple times in order to determine its type. If you screw up, others should catch the mistake. Give it a look!