Galactic Environment of the Sun. (January-February 2000 issue of American Scientist).
Science magazine faux pas: On page 2005 of the June 27 2003 issue of Science magazine our heliosphere visualization was prominantly displayed and used. We gave permission for Science to use this visualization providing that it was properly credited. Sadly, the policy of Science magazine is to provide invisible credits in fine print in the margine of the magazine binding, so they did not properly credit the origin of the image.
Forecast: Cloudy - August 1996, University of Chicago Magazine.
Comment: The April 1998 issue of Discover Magazine has a front page headline indicating that that the solar system is in a ``bad'' region of the galaxy. This is not accurate. The Sun is located in a region of space that is relatively empty, and the cloud system sweeping down on the Sun has an exceedingly low average space density, although small dense structures might be embedded in this cloud system.
The galactic environment of the Sun is a fascinating topic for study, and the April Discover magazine has a nice article by Jeff Winters discussing our galactic environment. Please buy this issue and read the article to understand the scope of the arguments.