What a difference a couple of weeks makes. Mid-way through July, there was all this excitement that the sun was finally waking up from its extended quiet spell. Sunspots were picking up, peaking at 26. Well, since the last sunspots on July 11th, there's been not a peep out of our celestial neighbor. That gives us a total of 23 spotless days for July, which, as I said earlier, equals the second quietest month of the last solar minimum. Even by current standards, it's no slouch. Of the 26 months (more or less) that the current minimum has been running, July is 10th equal, tying with May 2008. Also, let's put in context the peak sunspot number of 26 during the last month ... out of interest, I went into Spaceweather.com's archives, and looked at the sunspot number for July 30, 2002 ... the sunspot number was 304.