The Dutch Observatory

Yesterday I was busy all day with outreach at Stone Mountain Middle and could not slip in capturing an image.  This morning it was clear Skies and made these images.  Nice activie regions with a few to turn to the backside of the sun in the next day or so.

On September 12th, I presented   ”Imaging the Unusual” at the Mohawk Valley Astronomical Society’s monthly meeting in Kirkland NY.   A great group of people interested in Astronomy.  Last year I did visit their meeting at Colgate University, and this year  it was a great pleasure to be able to make a presentation to the group.  Here a few images of the session.

While visiting my wife’s relatives up north, I had a chance to do some solar observing and imaging with some friends I have known for almost 40 years.  I used to work with Carol and Chuck Higgins when I was still living in Upstate New York. Carol is the current President of the Mohawk Valley Astronomical Society and Chuck is the treasurer. It was great to spend this time on 9/11 with them, and in the process make another image of the Sun.  Thanks Carol and Chuck for spending the time with me and share this great hobby of ours and also to drive me around to see their observatories.

Early this morning the sky was clear. AR1515 has been very active over the last 24 hours with a few M class flares, the largest being an M5.6. In addition many C class flares. A very active sun. My attempt to make an animation again did not work, since clouds started to interfere. today a full disk image with some nice active regions, filaments and prominences. In addition a closeup of the group in the northern hemisphere of AR1513, 14, 15 and 17.

I have been “borrowing” the Clear Sky Chart from Hard Labor Creek Observatory for my blog site, since my location was so close to theirs.  Now after the move, its different, and since yesterday I have my own Clear Sky Chart for the location of The Dutch Observatory.  Thanks to Attilla Danko, A. Rahill and the Canadian Meteorological Center to make this possible

Today the sun showed its face again.  At the last hours of CR2120 I captured my images of today.  We missed several Active Regions and today AR1423, 27, 28 and 29 were very active.  The Sun did produce two M class flares in the last two days with the last one being an M-2 this morning in AR1429.  However, this was way before I started my imaging session.

Tuesday we did the first of a two day solar event at Hightower Trail Elementary in Conyers. Great students and teachers! The students saw the sun, the active region which produced the largest CME impact since 2003 and learned about the satellites that help us study the sun.  Back on Wednesday for the second day and Friday for the 8th Space Camp at Hightower.

Last summer, Romaine and I went back to upstate New York to visit relatives and friends.  It allowed me to reconnect with some old friends, Carol and Chuck Higgins, who are members of the Mohawk Valley Astronomical Society and I did attend one of their meetings while I was there.  See my blog for this by clicking here.  Earlier this week I rreceive an email from Chuck in which he attached an image that he and Carol made on 1/19/2012 of an ISS – Sun transit.  I like this image because it is very nice and there are not so many transit images that show transits in the Calcium-K emission line.  In the winter with the low sun, these transits usually happen at larger distances, so I think they did a fantstic job with this.  Congrats Chuck and Carol!!!  Click the image for the larger version.

Image by Chuck and Carol Higgins.

Following a day of cloudy skies, the sun showed his face again.  Today, at the beginning of Carington Rotation 2118,  in addition to the active regions 1366,74 and 75 a large new active region to be named.  The prominences at the western limb are not very tall but I observed a small flare as it grew and collapsed. 

The Proms on the Eastern limb were still there today, allowing me to capture sufficient data to make a 45 minute animation when I have time to process this.  Here the full disk image with closeups of the Proms.