Here Comes the Sun

little darlin', it's returning with flare

Dear generous reader,

Thank you to my most recent paying subscriber! My heart!

It is wonderful to receive a gift from another person, especially when it signals their appreciation of your creative output. Is there a better moment?

Artists conjure material out of their imagination with the hope of communicating and connecting with an audience. It is a mysterious business. We rarely know what will hit or miss — or simply be ignored — but we heed the impulse to produce art anyway. So each sale of a book, each positive review, each new subscriber is appreciated.

Speaking of gifts, I was moved to read of the decision of Ruth Gottesman to donate $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM) in the Bronx, NY so that all its students will be able to study tuition-free from this point onwards. The reaction of the students upon hearing the news was a mixture of shock and joy.

AECOM offers an M.D. program, a Ph.D. program in the biomedical sciences and clinical investigation, and two Masters of Science (M.S.) degrees. In the USA the average cost of becoming a doctor is $235,827¹, so this gift is removing a huge financial burden from generations of students. Such a deed not only impacts the students, but their families, and of course, the future people who will be in the care of these doctors and scientists. The ripple effect of this donation will be wide and long-lasting.

It reminds me of a song about optimism and hope: ‘Here Comes the Sun’. This was written by George Harrison of The Beatles in 1969 towards the end of a bleak English winter when he was going through a period of dissatisfaction. He wrote the song while noodling with his guitar and walking about in his mate Eric Clapton’s garden in Surrey. The song was released on The Beatles’ iconic Abbey Road album later that year. It is considered one of the best songs Harrison wrote.

Abbey Road album cover, copyright Apple

It’s hard not to know this image of George, Paul, Ringo and John strolling across the zebra crossing on Abbey Road outside EMI studios in London. The building would even become known as the Abbey Road Studios due to the success of this album. The creative team made the unprecedented decision to release the album without the title or the name of the band on the cover.

Yet, an image that is emblazoned on our collective imagination, and is part of our cultural history, was the result of a speedy photo shoot and an on-the-spot decision.

Road traffic wasn’t the same 50 years ago, but Abbey Road was still a busy thoroughfare, which meant that photographer Iain Macmillan only had a short time to get his shot on his Hasselblad camera. A policeman halted the traffic as Macmillan climbed up a stepladder in the middle of the road. The Fab Four crossed the road back and forth three times as Macmillan fired off a shot each time. Paul McCartney looked at the contact sheet and it was decided that frame five was the best, with all four musicians marching boldly across the road.²

The image chosen is the one where the four musicians are walking away from the studio, and funny enough this was the last time the band recorded together — they officially broke up in the following year.³

But, for me, the version of the song that always comes to mind is Nina Simone’s recording and the title of her 1971 album —which was a series of covers of popular songs.

There is a fragility to Simone’s voice, as if it hovers on the edge of cracking due to heartbreak. So when she says the sun is coming, you believe it is has arrived just in damn time.

It’s an apt song for this time of the year. Signs of spring are everywhere, including bumper crops of daffodils.⁴

Section of ‘Sun’ by Arthur Dove, 1943.

I mentioned earlier in the year that 2024 is going to be an active one for the sun as it approaches its solar maximum — the peak period in its eleven-year cycle.

According to NASA: ‘Flares are classified according to their strength. The smallest ones are B-class, followed by C, M and X, the largest. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes, each letter represents a ten-fold increase in energy output. So an X is 10 times an M and 100 times a C.’⁵

There was an X5 solar flare on the last day of 2023, and it seems to have been a harbinger of heightened activity. Since then we’ve had a M5 class ‘sympathetic solar flare’ and more fascinating, the appearance of a new sunspot, with the exciting name of AR3590.

On 18 February the ominous dark patch appeared on the sun’s Earth-facing side, and grew in size rapidly until it was much bigger than our planet. Four days later AR3590 released two impressive flares, a X1.7 and X1.8, followed by a massive X6.3 flare, the strongest in seven years. Since then AR3590 has doubled in size.

Spaceweather.com reports:

‘AR3590 is now the largest sunspot of Solar Cycle 25. For comparison, it is now 60% as large (by surface area) as the great sunspot that caused the Carrington Event in Sept. 1859. Even a 60%-intensity Carrington Event occuring today could cause problems for satellites, power grids, and internet connectivity. That's why forecasters are carefully watching this sunspot.’

The Carrington Event took place from 1 - 2 September 1859, during solar cycle 10, and resulted in global auroral displays as far down as the tropics, widespread disruption of telegraph systems, and some fires in telegraph stations. It was directly observed by British astronomer Richard Christopher Carrington. In this case the flare was accompanied by a coronal mass ejection (CME) from the Sun that collided with Earth's magnetosphere about 18 hours after the flare, resulting in a geomagnetic storm.

While AR3590 is pointing directly at Earth, and seething (it also released a few M class flares), it has yet to discharge a CME. Fingers crossed the sun will not let loose the flares of wrath.

Meanwhile, on the moon…

Odysseus lunar lander wide field of view image of Schomberger crater on the Moon. Credit: Intuitive Machines

On 22 February NASA, along with business partner, Intuitive Machines, landed a Nova-C craft called Odysseus in the South Pole region of the Moon, although it tipped over on its side. Thankfully, it is still functional.

It’s been fifty years since NASA celebrated a moon landing, and it was a tense affair thanks to the failure of the Peregrine One landing in January, which was another partnership between the space agency and a private company, Astrobotic. It’s a reminder that spaceflight remains a tricky prospect.

The Moon is becoming an area of interest for many countries, with India landing the Chandrayaan-3 rover on the Moon last August just after Russia failed with its Luna-25 probe. The Chinese Lunar Exploration Program has been quietly working away since 2013, with an aim to have astronauts on the Moon by 2030. NASA’s Artemis programme is gearing for a 2027 landing on the Moon.

I could devote my newsletter simply to reporting cosmological events, as it’s getting weird out there. Thanks to observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) scientists are analysing new information that is sometimes out of whack with our current understanding of physics.

For instance, Space.com reports that JWST

‘has found a galaxy in the early universe that's so massive, it shouldn't exist, posing a "significant challenge" to the standard model of cosmology, according to the study authors.

The galaxy, called ZF-UDS-7329, contains more stars than the Milky Way, despite having formed only 800 million years into the universe's 13.8 billion-year life span. This means they were somehow born without dark matter seeding their formation, contrary to what the standard model of galaxy formation suggests.’

We’ll figure it out eventually! But it’s not all that’s strange out there…. how about an ‘extremely red’ supermassive black hole!

If you wanted to pivot to a forward-future career, my money’s on astrophysics and assorted astro-industries!

A traveller puts his head under the edge of the firmament in the original (1888) printing of the Flammarion wood engraving.

1. According to the Education Data Initiative.

2. ‘The story behind The Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover’ by Martin O'Gorman.

3. The Let it Be album, released in 1970, was recorded a year before Abbey Road.

4. Which for me signals the approach of the St. Patrick’s Day festival.

5. ‘X-Class: A Guide to Solar Flares.’