The Dutch Observatory

Following the storms last night, another spotless day on the Sun today. A few filaments and a few plages are visible in Ha in  the SW and center of the solar disk.  The area in the SW was also visible as a faculae in visible light.  The NW limb shows a small prominence.

To show how the morphology of areas on the Sun change, I made this composite of the plage with filaments which was visible over the last four consecutive days in the SW quadrant of the Sun, on its way to the Western limb.  The top image made on January 6th, shows a dense structure containing the plage and well as the filaments.  Over the next three days one sees how the structure decays and falls apart.  Display the image in a seperate window to see the full size.

It was clear when I started, but after the setup the first cirrus clouds and contrails moved through.  The widely variable transparency made it hard to image.  The same plages from yesterday still showed today. Also, the same area in the NW that started to develop two days ago, still shows a few spots or maybe pores? It has not been named yet, and it was hard to see through the cirrus clouds in the WL closeup.  The filaments near the SW plage have decayed a lot.

Clear skies with relative good seeing today.  SWPC did not carry over AR2755.  However, one area I observed yesterday related to reverse polarization, has evolved and today seems to show two tiny spots, visible even in the full disk WL image.  We’ll see if SWPC gets spot reports and names the region maybe even later today.  The remnant of AR2755 still looks great in Ha as well as the new plage that came around the Eastern limb a few days ago.
Today full disk images as well as close ups of all the mentioned areas.

Well I was wrong, SWPC did see the spot yesterday and carried it for another day.  So yesterday was not a spotless day.  I was not able to make out the spot today, so we’ll see what happens.  Anyway, I made some close ups in Ha and Cak.  Two of the Ha close ups have been made with the ASI120MM and a 2x barlow.  The other with the ASI174MM and a 3x.

Clear skies this morning.  The Sun seems to be spotless again.  AR2755 looks like it decayed to a plage.  In addition, we see some filaments to the East of the area, as well as in the NE.  A nice prom extends from the SW limb in Ha and some smaller from the NW and SE limbs.

I didn’t expect to image today, but just before our roof would cast its shadow on the location from where I image, a few smaller holes in the fast moving clouds showed up, allowing me one image with the SVC80. And now it rains again….. It looks like we still have one area with one spot. I wonder if this still will be there by tomorrow.

Cloudy and rain for a few days, so today is a makeup day.  This is my 1700th blog discussing astronomy.  Today’s topic is the reversed polarized area that popped up January 1st and in the meantime has been named AR2755.  This is nice, we have a new region on the first day of the first year of the decade during solar minimum. This area is also reverse polarized, making it consistent to a Cycle 25 area.   Since I took the time Wednesday to make close ups of the WL and Ha images, I put together a composite showing three images of the area together with an SDO HMIB magnetogram image to document this event .  Apologies for the quality caused by many issues, starting with a jet stream with wind sheers of 100 miles/hour above.

My first session of the year and decade.  Clear skies with some clouds and below average seeing.  We seem to have a new pore, or area that came around the Eastern limb.  Its location is at a latitude of -35.5 degrees and a longitude of 354.5 degrees.  And guess what?  This one has again reverse polarization.  It was not named in SWPC’s midday discussion, so we’ll see if it makes it as a named active region. A few filaments  and some plages could be observed in CaK, as well as some faint and small proms.  My images today include a close up of the region with two different cameras, a 3x magnification with the ASI174MM and a 2x magnification with the ASI120MM.

The last day of the year and the sky is clear!  Seeing however is not as good, caused by wind sheer with the 110 miles/hour winds in the jet stream.  Since we have another spotless day, I imaged today the remaining plage of what used to be AR2753, which is slowly approaching the western limb.  This is spotless day 646 since Solar maximum.