There's always something exciting or beautiful happening in space. Here we are, minding our own business in the midst of a slow news week...The space shuttle Discovery's launch was delayed for safety reasons again (yikes, for the fifth time since February 12th?).

The International Space Station dodged some orbital debris. Our intense campaign of waiting for the government to assign a new NASA administrator has raged onward now for several months. All these things are surely important, but each leaves us somehow lacking in the "news" department.

Then out of the blue, wham-o, the universe dishes up something that forces us to stop and appreciate the wonder of it all. That happened to me today... and now I'm making sure it will happen to you too. I just got an e-mail from a good friend who was looking for his Barlow lens. I borrowed it, oh, at least five years ago (seriously!) and never returned it.

Turns out he needed it for some telescope observing today - that's right, today, as in the daytime. Don't worry, he's not insane... he's just one of those "Sun" guys pursuing his PhD in solar physics at CU. Important Safety Note: Don't observe the Sun during the day (as if you ever could observe it at night, duh) with a telescope unless, like my friend, you really do know what you're doing.

I strongly advise the rest of us (including myself) to cheat by going to the National Solar Observatory (NSO)  where you can view the current image of the Sun in all its glory. You may have heard we're currently near a Solar Minimum (i.e. the Sun is not very active). My friend is trying to study sunspots.... not the sort of thing that's easy during a Solar Minimum.

Proving that point, he urged me to go to the NSO site today. Here's what I found Wow! Not a single hint of a sunspot anywhere! And that's what shook me out of my slow-week doldrums. I hope it did the same for you.