A sampling of items regarding planetary science, astronomy, and solar science:<\/p>\n
** A<\/strong> solar cycle update<\/strong> from Bob Zimmerman:\u00a0 Sunspot update January 2019: The early solar minimum | Behind The Black<\/a><\/p>\n January saw a slight uptick in sunspot activity, but the overall activity remains comparable to mid-2008, when the last prolonged solar minimum began. If you go to my October 2018 update<\/a>, you can see the graph when it included data going back to 2000 and see the entire last minimum.<\/em><\/p>\n That last minimum started in the last half of 2007, and lasted until mid-2009, a full two years. If you look at the red line prediction of the solar science community, it appears that they are expecting this coming minimum to last far longer, almost forever. I expect this is not really true, but that they have simply not agreed on a prediction for the next cycle. Some in that solar science community have hypothesized<\/a> that we are about to enter a grand minimum, with no sunspots for decades and thus no solar maximum. Others do not agree.<\/em><\/p>\n ** Mark Showalter,\u00a0 New Horizons Hazard team lead and SETI Institute Senior Scientist<\/strong>, discusses “the spacecraft’s flyby of Ultima Thule, what it’s like working on the Hazards team, and even the naming of some of Pluto’s surface features” with SETI Institute<\/a> chief Bill Diamond:<\/p>\n