Haley Puckle

Morning. It can be a confusing topic, and it took me a while to realise that the sunspot number is not the same as the number of sunspots 'http://www.solen.info/solar/ This is an interesting website with up to date info on sunspot numbers and how they arrive at the figures they do. This website also suggests Februrary 2012 as a 'possible' cycle 24 max based on a projection of the smoothed sunspot number (see monthly data table at bottom of page). It is of course too early to confirm this as the solar max since a sustained period of increased solar activity could easily see a spike in the smoothed sunspot number.

Hi folks. BST throught the winter in my neck of the woods would mean the sun wouldn't rise until 10am in late December - no thank you! There's quite a difference in sun rise/set time along the length of Britain so it would be difficult to keep everyone happy without different time zones. I appreciate road safety is a very important matter, but I think it's hardly grounds to play around with GMT for the whole of Britain - leave the clocks alone!! What might work as a compromise would be if BST were extended to run from say early February to late November so that the morning weren't just so dark here up north - just and idea.

Beautiful display of the aurora borealis (or mirry dancers as we call them locally) up here in Shetland tonight. Most vivid I’ve seen in perhaps ten years or more.