The Sun

Well, I know where all the fall color is - surrounding Montreal. NASA's Earth Observatory sends out a weekly newsletter highlighting new investigations and imagery. The web site's purpose "is to provide a freely-accessible publication on the Internet where the public can obtain new satellite imagery and scientific information about our home planet. The focus is on Earth’s climate and environmental change". Breaking News on the site included this article on climate change:"SUN’S DIRECT ROLE IN GLOBAL WARMING MAY BE UNDERESTIMATED, DUKE PHYSICISTS REPORT."

I'm reading a new book by Arthur Clarke and Steven Baxter's book "Sunstorm".

"Set in the same universe as Clarke's 2001 and its sequels, Clarke and Baxter's second and final Time Odyssey book (after 2004's Time's Eye) will especially appeal to fans of hard SF who appreciate well-grounded science and humans with a can-do attitude to problem solving. In 2037, the same day the enigmatic alien Firstborn return Bisea Dutt, the heroine of Time's Eye, to her home in London, the city grinds to a halt as a sun storm sends a massive surge of energy to Earth, temporarily destroying the world's electronic infrastructure. This surge presages another, much larger sun storm, due to hit in 2042, which will utterly annihilate life across the globe. Against all odds, the nations of Earth come together to construct a huge space umbrella that will shield the planet from the worst of the barrage." (Publisher's Weekly)

It is a good story and interesting science (fiction and truth) for thought.

A site to check out the sun's daily activity is the Space Weather site. They have great galleries of aurora photographs and lots of other interesting Space info.

Meanwhile, we are waiting for the sun to show itself here. Last week was all fog, then the rains came (close to 7 inches for us over a couple days), and now just cloudy gray gloom with more rain predicted later this week.