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Readers! A November fund-raising drive!

 

It is unfortunately time for another November fund-raising campaign to support my work here at Behind the Black. I really dislike doing these, but 2025 is so far turning out to be a very poor year for donations and subscriptions, the worst since 2020. I very much need your support for this webpage to survive.

 

And I think I provide real value. Fifteen years ago I said SLS was garbage and should be cancelled. Almost a decade ago I said Orion was a lie and a bad idea. As early as 1998, long before almost anyone else, I predicted in my first book, Genesis: The Story of Apollo 8, that private enterprise and freedom would conquer the solar system, not government. Very early in the COVID panic and continuing throughout I noted that every policy put forth by the government (masks, social distancing, lockdowns, jab mandates) was wrong, misguided, and did more harm than good. In planetary science, while everyone else in the media still thinks Mars has no water, I have been reporting the real results from the orbiters now for more than five years, that Mars is in fact a planet largely covered with ice.

 

I could continue with numerous other examples. If you want to know what others will discover a decade hence, read what I write here at Behind the Black. And if you read my most recent book, Conscious Choice, you will find out what is going to happen in space in the next century.

 

 

This last claim might sound like hubris on my part, but I base it on my overall track record.

 

So please consider donating or subscribing to Behind the Black, either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. I could really use the support at this time. There are five ways of doing so:

 

1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.

 

2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation. Takes about a 10% cut.
 

3. A Paypal Donation or subscription, which takes about a 15% cut:

 

4. Donate by check. I get whatever you donate. Make the check payable to Robert Zimmerman and mail it to
 
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652

 

You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.


Longest blank sun since 2010

The sun has now been blank of sunspots for five days, the longest such stretch since 2010, during the last stages of the last solar minimum.

Nor is this blank stretch over. Though I have no doubt that sunspots will return to the Sun in the next few days, this sudden arrival of blank days suggests again that the solar maximum might be ending far sooner than presently predicted.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

9 comments

  • Willi

    Spots on the far side aren’t counted, right?

  • For purposes of determining sunspot numbers, yes, farside spots are not counted. This is simply to maintain a consistent counting system from before the space age, when there were no space probes capable of seeing the far side.

  • mpthompson

    Do we currently have space probes to monitor the far side of the sun on a regular basis? My memory whether we launched such probes is vague.

  • We have a pair of satellites called Stereo specifically designed to see the entire face of the sun.

    Update: I forgot to add that one of the two Stereo craft was lost in 2014, which makes it difficult to get complete coverage at this time.

  • Willi

    So, if a sun spot can’t be seen then it doesn’t exist…

  • Willi: Of course not. As I said, they only count the spots on the near side because, until the space age, that was all they could see and count. In order to have the sunspot count remain consistent they use only the nearside spots in the count. However, in studying the sun and its solar cycle solar sciences absolutely do not ignore the far side. This is why the Stereo spacecraft were launched and built, to give sciences a 360 degree view of the sun.

  • Willi

    I wasn’t being serious, just trying to play off “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it…”

  • Joe

    Willi, read your second comment and knew exactly where you were going with it, humor not lost on all of us!

  • Max

    If the dark spots on the sun were dark matter…
    Then they would exist even though no one has ever seen one :)

    A news report today said “the ozone hole is smaller this year”. They’re giving the banning of CFCs the credit even though it’s always small during a solar decline. Someday they will connect the dots between ozone consumption and stratospheric clouds from solar activity.

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