The Dutch Observatory

Clear Skies this morning with OK seeing 4/6.  Not as good as yesterday.  AR2297 produced a M9.2 flare yesterday at 21:45 UT yesterday and as a result, the associated sunspot area has increased from 30 to 180 millionth.  AR2297 now contains the only 10 spots observed on the Sun this morning.  Today a full disk image in Ha as well as a close up of AR2297in Ha as well as WL/Continuum.

Clear and stable skies today.  Seeing was great, so I brought my SVC80 out again for white light/continuum filtered images in addition to the Ha. The Sun is very quiet today with three active regions and 7 Sunspots covering only 50 millionth and only a few C-class flares!  Wow. Some nice filaments stretch out and we observe a few proms primarily at the Western limb.

Finally a day with temps in the 60s and a few breaks in the clouds as well as a high level active Sun. I was lucky to get the holes in the clouds while an M3.7 flare was in progress. Unfortunately I had to wait for a proper hole to get a close up at a FL of 1200mm with the SM40. So far AR2290 has produced today 11 C-Class flares, and 5 M-class flares including an M4.1 and M3.7. Wow that’s fun again.

Cloudy forecast for today, but a few breaks between the clouds.  Only a full disk image today.  Activity has picked up a bit overnight, so far 5 C-class flares, and the 28 spots today occupy 200 millionth.  Some interesting filaments and a group of Prominences at the NE limb today.

Clear Skies again this morning.  The Sun seems real quiet.  There are only 6 Active Regions, but the 9 spots reported, only cover an area of 70 millionth.  The last reported C-class flare was on the 23th. and since then only 4 B-class flares occurred.  The Sun is really taking a breather.
However, prominence that shows at the Eastern limb, looks really intricate and pretty.

Clouds all morning, but some clear skies when I came back from town.  However the Sun was still in the tree behind the house and was covered by thin clouds.  Here a full disk image including some tree branches and thin clouds. (a stack of 21 hand selected frames).   The Sun is really getting quiet. Today we still have 4 Active Regions, with a total of only 9 spots which cover only 70 millionth and we registered only 2 C-class flares, not associated with the regions.  A quiet sun with a few filaments. 

I had a little time this morning with clear skies.  However, the seeing was terrible.  Only a full disk image today, too unstable and too cold for close ups (21 degrees with windshield of 12) .  The Sun shows a bit more activity today with 7 small active regions except 2282 which still shows a size of 140 millionth.  Total count of spots is 25 and three flares in the last 24 hours out of 2282.

Clear Skies early this morning, and had to hurry to setup before a solid front moved in.  I missed capturing a clear image of  the Sun by 5 minutes, so today an image I took of the Sun when the Sun was still behind the trees and the clouds started to roll in already.  Today’s Sun is a continuation of the run to very low activity.  Today the same number of active regions but the number of sunspots is reduced to 10 covering a mere 180 millionth.  However,  I have to say AR2282 was able to produce one C-class flare.  But the Sun shows very low activity in the last week and especially today.

The activity of the Sun is very low today.  Three active regions with 19 spots covering a total of a low 250 millionth.  No flares have been recorded in the last two days. The high filament of a few days ago is gone and with it the beautiful prom.   Captured today a full disk image only through, and between clouds while the temp was just above freezing.

Wow, the Sun’s activity is really slowing down.  Only 3 active regions with a total sunspot area of only 250 millionth and the Sun produced only 3 B-Class flares in the last 24 hours.  The large filaprom is still beautiful and today I was able to get more detail in my image of the 50,000 miles high structure.  Since SDO is now 5 years active, I checked back what the Sun did 5 years ago and the Sun was also very quiet. We were watching two active regions: AR1046 and 48 with a size of 70 and 10 millionth respectively which produced two C-class flares.  This all is in stark contrast to the week of October 24 2014, when we had 5 named active regions  with a total of 76 sunspots covering an area of 3090 millionth and we were leading up to the 27th when AR2192 by itself produced 13 C-Class Flare, 7 M-Class flare and even 2 X-Class Flares.