The Dutch Observatory

Active Region 1944 keeps shrinking and is a lot less active than two days ago.  It now is 1030 millionth and produced only 1 flare in the previous 24 hours.  Still, the Sun is very beautiful with all the active regions and spots.  Today, I imaged 1944 through two color filters in addition to the visible light filter, red, and green.  The green filter brings out the regions better than the red does. (lighter regions).  Also I am pretty happy with the granulation through my 80mm Stellarvue. also on the image of 1949.  The full disk image shows 9 active regions today.

Finally for today the full disk images of the 8th in H-alpha.  6 Active regions with AR1944, which has grown to 1560 millionth and two regions without flare activity. In addition 1946 and 1947 have taken over the activity from AR1944 and have produced numerous M and even X flares over the last few days.

These images are from the same imaging session as in my previous post.  This shows the Sun’s active region 1944 in three different sizes.  Captured with the SVC80 with white light and green filters and different barlows.  I am longing for the jet stream to leave us alone for a while.   The first image shows also AR1943 and the larger images were captured as 1280×960.

Clear Skies on the 8th.  Spend a lot of time a little below freezing to image the Sun in H-Alpha as well as visible light with green filter.  The skies were stable enough to let me image at 1600mm but the C11 had to stay inside.  Here a nice comparison of the same area on the Sun with Active Region 1944 using the SolarMax40 and the Stellarvue SVC80 with some nice details even extending in the umbra.  The size of AR 1944 is huge at 1560 millionth and one can easily make out the two largest spots with the naked eye using eclipse glasses..

The deepfreeze has arrived, Temp at 6F (-15C)  this morning.  Imaged at 26F but skies were not much better than the day before.  Spend a lot of time trying to process the close ups but it really did not work.  So today another full disk image of the Sun.  AR1944 has grown now to a 1540 millionth.  Wow.  But flare activity is way down.  The sunspot is easily visible with the naked eye through eclipse glasses.

Following two days of cold and rainy weather the sun showed its face again, between low and fast moving clouds.  7 Active regions today.  Seeing was terrible so I stopped trying for close ups, but at least I got another full disk Sun.  And maybe I can find a good frame in the avis I captured.   AR1944 has increased in size again and is now 1460 millionth but also a large reduction in sun pots and flare activity, only 3 in the last 24 hours.

This Christmas season was not good for astronomy in the Atlanta region.  Today the first day of sun since December 19th. But at least one day.  I imaged a full solar disk today at a temperature of 28 degrees F.  My hands were too cold to continue with the white light close ups.  AR1944 which just came around the eastern limb has increased in size over night from 250 to 1060 millionth.  I believe this is the largest active region I’ve seen in this cycle and it has been very active.

A sunny day with the beginning of a new Solar Rotation  and Frank came over to try white light imaging with his new scope.  It did not work out well.  Went back to my small scope configuration with the Stellarvue SVC80, ASI120MM with a 2x barlow.  Here a few close ups but did not have the time for any H-alpha images.

Today clear and relative stable skies, before the clouds move in.  The seeing was around 3 to 4 and allowed me to make a few close ups in Ha as well in visible light with a green filter using the Stellarvue SVC80.  I was pretty happy with the result of this little scope showing some nice granulation.  AR1921 has increased it size now to 360 millionths and 18 has grown from 160 to 180 while 17 started decaying.

The number of active regions has increased to 10 and the largest, AR1921, has increased in size to 350 millionths. The number of flares however has not increased so much and is around 5 – 6 a day. Mostly C-class flares. It has been a while since we saw an M-class flare. Tried for some close ups today, but too much turbulence and too much atmosphere to drill through.