In 1994, if I wanted to know the exact location and shape of sunspots, I had to set up my telescope with it’s homemade solar-viewing adapter, and have a look myself, or I had to subscribe to some journal and read about them after the fact (and only if they were amazing enough to be mentioned).

In 2009, I can find out exactly what the sun is doing at any moment of the day or night in something very close to real time, just by getting on the internet.

If things have changed that much in 15 years, imagine how much things have changed in my entire lifetime?

I think I may rebuild my solar-viewing adapter and start setting up the telescope at noon every day, and marking the appearance of sunspots on little pieces of white paper. I used to look forward to that. It was interesting. Seeing what the sun is up to at any moment of the day in exquisite detail seems to take some of the fun and mystique out of it all.

I still have all those little white pieces of paper, carefully dated and mapped with the locations of that day’s sunspots. Why, I even have little pieces of white paper, carefully dated and mapped with the location of Jupiter’s moons each night it was visible. I’m a geek that way.