Archive for the ‘Sun and Climate’ Category

Our Enigmatic Sun and the Sun’s Closest Twins Explored at Lowell Observatory

Thursday, September 17th, 2009

What is going on with the sun these days since it has been in an unusually deep and long minimum period? How are astronomers discovering and describing distant stars that are close twins of the sun and what astonishing possibilities are these discoveries telling them about our own star? How ...

Observations begin anew!

Friday, August 1st, 2008

After a 7-month hiatus during which we rebuilt our entire spectrograph system downstream of the cameras, we are again operational and observing the long-term behavior of the Sun and its closest stellar cousins. In January 2008, the old camera electronics on the Solar-Stellar Spectrograph died after 17 years of hard service.  ...

Celebrate spring with star parties and an astronomer’s view of global warming

Friday, April 4th, 2008

We have two special Sunday evening events in April.  In both cases, we're open from 5:30 PM - 9:30 PM and the cost is $6 per adult; $5 per senior, college student or AAA member; $3 per youth (ages 5-17).  Reservations are not needed. April 6, Spring Break Star Fest.  This ...

SORCE meeting, part 4

Friday, February 8th, 2008

I'm back in Flagstaff from a thoroughly enjoyable meeting. In the second full day of talks, the speakers concentrated on processes causing solar variability, and the significance of solar variability in forcing terrestrial climate. Here's a rundown of the main topics covered. There was a nice discussion by Karel ...

SORCE meeting, part 2

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

As expected, this is turning out to be a very interesting meeting, and the SORCE principal investigator launched things in his introduction with a very provactive question: "Is the Modern Maximum Over?" He was referring to the period of generally increasingly strong solar cycles that has prevailed since ...

SORCE meeting, part 1

Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

Hi everyone, I'm blogging this morning from the main meeting room at the SORCE (SOlar Radiation and Climate Experiment) Science meeting in Santa Fe, NM. SORCE is a satellite observatory that makes, among other things, measurements of the Sun's total brightness on an ongoing basis. The topic of ...

New Solar-Stellar Spectrograph Web site

Thursday, January 31st, 2008

I posted a few weeks ago that our solar-stellar research grant has just been renewed for three years. One of the proposed components of our new funding cycle is a greatly expanded Web site, and the proposal reviewers strongly encouraged us to follow through with that. So, over the ...