The Dutch Observatory

This morning (1/30) temps were decent and seeing was OK.  AR2268 has not made its mind up what to do.  It now is increasing in size again to a little over 500 millionth and produced 7 Flares over the 24 hour period of which 3 were M-Class flares.  AR2277 is a new one to watch with 260 millionth and a respectable 7 flares.  Today a full disk image and a close up of AR2268 and 2277. Newton rings are getting bad.  Need a leveler.

Some stable and clear skies today for a change.  The Sun is showing some increased activity with AR2268 having rebound again to 480 millionth and three other areas also having grown.  AR2268 even managed to produce a C9.8 as well as an M1.4 flare.  The rest is still relative quiet.  Today a full disk image of the Sun and two close ups of AR2268 and AR2273.

Friday evening’s clouds are gone but the seeing is still unstable.  Today a full disk image.  The largest and most active regions is AR2268 with a size of 460 millionth.  The largest flare in the last 24 hours however was only a C2.0 flare.

It really is getting quiet.  Today AR2266 has become smaller again, and of  the four identified regions, three of them have one tiny sunspot only.

In my previous solar post I asked where all the Sunspots had gone….. but today a little improvement.  Stability had improved a lot since the Jupiter session last night, so this morning I was able to also capture a few white light close ups of AR2266 including some nice granulation.  Four active regions today, all very small, 10, 20, 30 and 90 millionth respective.  Only two flares from AR2259.  The Close ups are from AR2266, which contains 13 spots.

Clear Skies, but variable gusts of wind making it unstable with seeing around 2/6.    Only a full disk image and a question arises:  Where have all the Sun Spots gone?    AR2259 is reduced to a size of 100 and AR61 and 62 each are only 10, with a total spot count of 19 and only 2 C-class flares in the last two days.  The sun is really quiet today…..

Clear Skies after a what seemed an eternity of rainy and cloudy days.  Seeing about 3/6.  Today a full disk image as well as a close up of 2259 which dropped from a size of 260 on the previous day to 160 millionth. The activity is very low with only 5 C-class flares in the previous 2 days.

Clear Skies on the 9th, with reasonable seeing conditions (3/6) sufficient to also bring out the SV80 for as close-up in white light/continuum.  The dominant active region today is AR2257 although its size is a modest 170 millionth.  Both close-ups made with the SM40, and the SV80, used a 3x barlow.   The white light image is a stack of 5 hand selected images out of 1200, stacked and sharpened in Registax6 and processed in Photoshop.

Today we had some clear skies, but not stable enough for white light close ups.  A full disk image and a Ha close-up of AR2253.  This Active Region reached its peak two days ago at 900 millionth, but today its size is only 700.  Its flare activity has been mostly in the C-class with two small M-class flares on the 4th.

My daughter Tanya placed two pinhole cameras in Atlanta.  One in Cabbage town, the second one in Midtown.  The Midtown image came out great and is shown here.  The period covered is from the Summer Solstice until the Winter Solstice 2014.  This is the best Solar graph we have gotten in the last year.  We’re ready for the next cycle from the Winter solstice until Spring Equinox or Summer Solstice.