A blank sun during solar maximum

Though it is not yet official, it appears the sun is blank of sunspots today, for the first time since January 16.

Solar scientists have concluded that the solar minimum of the past four years has ended and that the sun is now moving towards solar maximum. The recent activity in August has seemed to confirm this. However, once the minimum has ended, the sun should not have any further blank days until the maximum is over and the sun is ramping back down to solar minimum. That the sun should appear blank again during its ramp up to solar maximum is quite unusual, probably unprecedented, and is further evidence that the sun is heading towards a period of little or no solar activity.

Legal rabbit farm raided and destroyed

The abuse of power: A legal rabbit farm raided and destroyed by Colorado police.

“They’ve destroyed me emotionally, socially and professionally,” Bell said, listing numerous ways in which local animal rights activists have publicized information about the case in an effort to make her and her four children — all adults who haven’t lived under her roof for several years — look bad. But that’s not all.

“They’ve made 4-H kids all across Colorado just sob,” she said, “because I am their 4-H connection.” Bell noted that 12 of the seized rabbits belong to 4-H kids who were planning to show them at upcoming fairs — two at the Jefferson County Fair that begins Thursday and the remaining 10 at the Colorado State Fair which runs from Aug. 26 to Sept. 5 in Pueblo.

Hubble captures a necklace in space

necklace in space

Who needs aliens and imagined cities on the moon when you have a reality that produces such strange and beautiful things as the image on the right?

On July 2, the Hubble Space Telescope took this image of a planetary nebula, aptly dubbed the Necklace Nebula. As the caption explains,

A pair of stars orbiting close together produced the nebula, also called PN G054.2-03.4. About 10,000 years ago one of the aging stars ballooned to the point where it engulfed its companion star. The smaller star continued orbiting inside its larger companion, increasing the giant’s rotation rate.

The bloated companion star spun so fast that a large part of its gaseous envelope expanded into space. Due to centrifugal force, most of the gas escaped along the star’s equator, producing a ring. The embedded bright knots are dense gas clumps in the ring.

The binary still exists, and can be seen as the star in the center of the necklace. The two stars are now only a few million miles apart and complete an orbit around each other in about a day.

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