To read this post please scroll down.

 

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.


Jupiter’s North Pole, as seen in infrared by Juno

The Juno science team has released an animation that shows, in infrared and in three dimensions, the storms of Jupiter’s north pole.

The link has three videos. One shows the gas giant’s surprisingly irregular magnetic field, as found by Juno. The first and third show a low and a high fly-over of the north pole, in infrared. I have embedded both fly-overs below the fold. First watch the high fly-over, which is the first video. This will make the low fly-over more understandable as it flies over the eight smaller storms that encircle the pole’s central vortex.

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

3 comments

  • Localfluff

    And Juno has imaged Io, the volcanic moon. Tidally volcanic moons like Io should be easily visible. The first exo-moons discovered might be more like Io than anything else. Because it emits light and is more visible, both in direct imaging and in high precision transiting measurements.
    <a href="https://twitter.com/_RomanTkachenko/status/983762538776092673"Io from Juno

    Io is the volcanic moon, Ganymede is the magnetic moon, Titan is the atmospheric moon, Triton is the captured moon. And the Moon is the Moon. They are individuals. Billions of years does that to objects. They all get on unique and unrepeatable development paths.

  • Localfluff

    https://twitter.com/_RomanTkachenko/status/983762538776092673

    So rare with blogs that requires one to type in the HTLM code to make a tidy link, and cannot edit it, that I suppose there’s no interest here for any tidy posts here. Using the 1990s blog tech to argue for the future sounds a bit hollow.

  • LocalFluff: Are you complaining about BtB? Because if so I am baffled. I cut and paste html code into comments all the time.

    However, I see that my commenters don’t have buttons to insert the standard bold, italics, link codes. I will find out about getting them added.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *