The Dutch Observatory

Broken skies this morning with 50% cloud coverage, but when I was ready to image I was left with small areas between the clouds.  Today the Sun is very active with 2 M-Class Flares and 29 C-class flares in the last two days and shows 6 active regions with 41 sunspots covering 320 millionths.  The flares showed mostly in non-named areas on the Sun.  A Prom at the NE limb again extends into a filament in the NE quadrant.  The largest area today is AR2365 and has not produced a flare so far today.  Because of the clouds today only one full disk image in H-a.

Another nice morning.  The Sun shows 9 Active Regions with  46 sunspots covering 540 millionths.  5 C-class flares in the last 2 days make the activity low.  The NE limb shows some nice prominences as well as a real nice filaprom which stretches over a large area of the NE quadrant.  Today a full disk image and closeups of AR2360,61 and 62 in H-alpha and Calcium-K

Clear Skies again!!  Today’s Sun shows 8 named Active Regions with a total of 49 spots covering 580 millionths.  Activity is medium with 7 C-class flares in the last two days.  Captured a full disk image as well as two close ups of the region covering AR2380,61 and 62 in H-alpha as well as in Ca-K.  Very little prom activity but the Sun burst is still nicely visible ( mostly on the Northern side of the region).

Saturday 2015-06-06.  The Sky is pretty stable this morning.  The Sun shows very few prominences and they are very small, but the active regions still stick out especially in Calcium-K which shows a nice light bridged AR2362.  So, today two full disk images again, one with the ASI120MM and the other with the DMK41 as well as a close up of Active Regions 2360,61 and 62 in CaK.  Today 7 active regions with 29  sunspots covering 420 millionths.

A nice morning with great Seeing conditions.  Today I took the DMK41 out again and made a full disk image with it as well as the ASI120.  The close ups are with the ASI camera and the Meade140 barlow cell and the Klee 3x.  The Sun looks beautiful and the greater area around AR2360 looks like a giant Sun burst.  Today’s sun shows 6 active regions with a total of 20 sunspots covering 340 millionth.  Flare activity has gone up again to 11 flares mostly coming from 2361.

The Sun produced 2 C-class flares in the last day or so and is back to 3 active regions.  The 8 sunspots total about 100 millionths and the great filaments from a week ago are gone.  Today a nice prom at the west side where the filaments disappeared.  The good news is that we have not had a spotless day so far.
Today a full disk image and two close ups of AR2356.  One using the cell of the Meade 140 2x barlow screwed onto the camera and the other using  the Klee 3x.

The activity on the Sun remains very low.  Two Active Regions with a total of three spots.  Total spot area today is 70 millionths and no flares in the last two days.  The large filament starts to reach the western edge of the Sun and the SW limb shows a very nice prominence.  So overall the Sun is still very nice to observe.  The skies were pretty stable so I took my SVC80 back out again to image AR2356 through the Baader 0.3u photographic filter combined with the continuum filter. Today also close ups in H-a, CaK in addition to the whole disk image.

This is the lowest activity I have seen the Sun in a long time and a great contrast in what it was 7 months ago.  Yesterday only two Active Regions with two sunspots each covering 40 millionths total.  Today even less: 1 Active Region with one sunspot only covering 60 millionths and no flares in the last two days.  Now that’s low!   However the filaments make up for this.  The huge filament that we have been seeing for over a week is still very nice as it approaches the western limb of the Sun.  Today a full disk image as well as a close up of the filament.

A beautiful day with a low activity Sun.  The number of named Active Regions has increased to 6 with 4 C-class flares in the last two days.  Sunspot area has increased to 160 millionths.  The filaments are very nice and large.  The three filaments in the NE quadrant stretch out for at least 170,000 miles.  The Eastern limb also shows some nice prom activity.  Today a full disk Sun in Ha and two close ups.  One of the area around 2353 and the second one shows the three active regions 2349, 50 and 53.

Yesterday we did start a new Carington Rotation.  The Sun is real calm today with three named Active Regions which produced only 2 C-class flares in the last two days.  Six spots only, with a size of only 70 millionths.  That however does not mean that the sun does not look great!  Filaments and a beautiful FilaProm make up for the low activity.  Today a full disk image with a close up of the filaprom at the NE limb.