Unprecedented images may explain one of greatest mysteries of the sun

Unprecedented images may explain one of greatest mysteries of the sun

Highest-ever resolution pictures of our star could help show why its corona is millions of degrees hotter than its surface Golden bands and swirling vortices have been spotted on the sun in the most detailed images ever captured of the turbulent surface of our home star. Astronomers observed the sun with the Inouye solar telescope in Hawaii, the world’s most powerful solar telescope, and saw new features smaller than 20km (12 miles) across in a magnetically active region close to a sun spot. Continue reading...

theguardian.com

Farming always plays the victim Guardian article www.theguardian.com/environment/... My take on it markavery.info/2026/08/05/f... #drought #food #wheat #land

Marble fragments of the original colossal statue of Constantine in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Musei Capitolini, and the STUNNING plaster, resin, etc, full-scale reconstruction at the nearby Villa Caffarelli Gardens. My 📷 Sovrintendenza Capitolina Fondazione Prada Factum Foundation

Translucency www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Gaby Wood · Translucency: Cyanotypes

I don’t​ remember when I first learned to make cyanotypes, but I had loved Anna Atkins’s prints for many years...

lrb.co.uk

Just finished this lighthouse/island based mystery thriller. Absolutely riveting read with a great twist in the second half. Could easily see this as a film 👍

And if you have any interest in music whatsoever, definitely watch the whole documentary series (10 episodes in all), covering the entire history of music. The whole thing is here: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis... Very positively reviewed by the Guardian too: www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...

For the Record: An Incomplete History of Music review – it’s amazing that this staggering show exists

Charlotte Ritchie presents a wildly ambitious and unapologetically brainy YouTube documentary that takes in Big Bang soundwaves, singing dolphins and an astonishing amount in between. Don’t miss it fo...

theguardian.com

Very hot survey yesterday of a fantastic long barrow near Downton, #Wiltshire. Great detail of internal trapezoidal enclosure and interesting segmented ditch. Similar barrows with enclosures all seem to be along the eastern edge of the Avon Valley. #Neolithic #Archaeology

Really looking forward to hearing the 1612 Underture by The Eccentronic Research Council live at Ludlow Assembly Rooms later this month. Can’t believe it was 2012 when we bought this album, where have those 14 years gone so quickly 😯

The Odyssey story (not the film) ends so abruptly. After the massacre of the suitors Bereaved Ithacans: Hey, Odysseus murdered our sons..Fiiiiight ! Odysseus & Co: Hey those bereaved Ithacans are getting a bit uppity..Fiiiiight ! Athena: Oi you lot ! Stop Fighting ! They never learn🙄 The End

Didn’t get on with The Odyssey film at all. The score & sound effects were way too loud, to the point of being really uncomfortable. The old lady next to me had sensitive hearing aids on & physically jumped & left early. Air conditioning was freezing (felt like we were literally in Hades 😁).Terrible

Well that was a great read and one of the most moving and satisfying endings I have read for a long while. A brilliant debut novel 👏

“A drought has been extended across the whole of Wales with the country on course for its driest July on record in 190 years” www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Drought declared for whole of Wales amid sustained high temperatures

Wales is on course for its driest July on record in almost 190 years.

bbc.co.uk

Nice to see a female Emerald Damselfly on the Montgomeryshire Canal today. These should be really common in this habitat but I’m lucky if I see one per year now.

Sheepfold & hafod archaeology in the Berwyn Mountains. All of these are along the Afon Disgynfa valley west of Pistyll Rhaiadr & there were plenty more hidden in the head height bracken. They are mostly late Medieval & Post Medieval in date, but frequently incorporate or robbed earlier structures.

The Moel Ty-Uchaf stone circle above Llandrillo in the Berwyn Mountains. Although it looks like a stone circle now the presence of an internal denuded mound, robbed central burial & closely spaced stones suggest this may have originated as a kerbed cairn. There are two openings in the circle… 1/2 👇

Something a little different this week! Our new episode with @alexvandewalle.bsky.social talks about the various ways that video games treat and portray Greek myth, and it's more diverse than you might imagine! We discuss more than half a dozen games, from the good, the bad to the downright weird!

A Beautiful Plume moth in the house today

Nice out the back…

Are you interested in how interactive video games could inspire interest in heritage across new audiences? My student Sophie has designed a trailer for 'Ancient Kernow' - she would love you to watch it and take her short survey: youtu.be/Ilau7-52GAE

Ancient Kernow Trailer

YouTube video by Sophie J Art

youtu.be

Nice example of columnar jointing in an igneous intrusion slicing through the slates on Craig Rhiwarth above Llangynog

The impressive early opencast lead mine remains at Craig y Mwyn high in the Berwyn mountain range. This is the best example of hydraulic mining or ‘hushing’ in Powys with dams set around the rim to send water down the opencast & reveal mineral. It is Roman, Medieval & Post Medieval in date

Will be sorry to see our local astronomy radio telescope go at Knockin if Jodrell Bank loses its funding. It’s part of the MERLIN array of telescopes across the UK

Planning future walks 🙂 Written by a colleague in the former Gwynedd Archaeoligcal Trust. Well worth picking up a secondhand copy of this excellent 2013 book. Superb images and maps throughout.

A long 14km walk into trackless nowhere in the Berwyn Mountains to see a stone circle & stone row that we failed to get to in 2020 due to bad weather. One of the most remote sites I have been to. Tall bracken and rushy grass hide the stones & most are barely 20-50cm high. Stone row is easiest to see

Want a book about the end of the southern British Iron Age, the Roman invasion and the greatest king of this island has ever had? If only such a thing existed...🤔 www.bloomsbury.com/uk/caratacus... @bloomsburyacademic.bsky.social January 2027 #Archaeology #AncientBlueSky 🏺

First very light shower of rain in almost 2 months here then back to normal 10 minutes later

I was struggling to interpret the timber structures adjacent to the 17th/18th c. mill being excavated at Pentreheylin, Powys as there are no UK comparisons but then I had a look at mills in European paintings of the time and it starts to make sense.

Prof @tonypollard.bsky.social’s article on Thomas Ker’s Waterloo papers, & on relic collecting & the origins of battlefield tourism, is available on Open Access via the Journal of Conflict Archaeology #C19 #archaeology #Waterloo www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

“I have been Eighteen times since that awful day.” the Ker papers, relic collecting, and the origins of battlefield tourism at Waterloo

This paper considers a previously unpublished collection of writings relating to the aftermath of the Battle of Waterloo, fought in Belgium on 18 June 1815.1 The author of these documents, Thomas K...

tandfonline.com

Perfect late evening music from the BBC Proms at Gateshead with largely 20th & 21st century choral pieces. Got quite emotional remembering how Gill and I loved companionable evenings like this listening to music 🥲 www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

BBC Proms - 2026 - Proms Across the UK: Choirs on the Concourse - BBC Sounds

Live at the BBC Proms: BBC Singers and conductor Sofi Jeannin with soloist Jess Gillam.

bbc.co.uk

Good #earlymusic listening via the BBC Proms. Extracts from Purcell and Dowland played and sung by the excellent Jupiter Ensemble www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

BBC Proms - 2026 - Late Night Baroque - BBC Sounds

Live at the BBC Proms: Jupiter Ensemble, director Thomas Dunford & tenor Laurence Kilsby

bbc.co.uk