The Dutch Observatory

Stephen Ramsden was at Jon Wood Field to test the 60mm Coronado.  I drove out and kept him company for a few hours.  When I got home, I still had time to  get a run in before the sun disappeared behind the trees.  The hugh prominance which I saw at the field was still there.  Here my capture in CaK of that what emerged as an M2 CME, before I lost the sun in the trees.

This morning it was very cloudy with broken clouds. Not sufficient time for my daily image of the total sun, but enough for one run with the details of AR1147 and AR1148. Here a close up through my PST-CaK and the DMK31AU03.AS, cropped to the final size. A lot of activity if you compare this to the images of the last few days. A lot of small spots have formed.

Today I could see clear skies to the south of me but they never came up to my location, except for some thin clouded areas. I shot this image through these “openings” and ran only half the number of frames for the mosaic. Because of the difference in cloud coverage between the two sides of the mosaic, I had problems adjusting the transit between the two areas.  The areas around AR1147 and 1149 are very active and another spot seems to have developed.

There were enough holes in the clouds today to image the sun.  Active Region 1149 has developed from a number of specks into a nice sized sunspot.  It is almost as large as AR1147 which is just above it.  Wish I could have images an Ha image to see what filaments there are.  Reports show some C2  CMEs.  Ar 1148 has moved to the backside of the sun in the mean time.  In addition i was able to image some prominances primarily on the P limb of the sun.  I also have added an inverted processed image of the same data.  We’ll have to see how these 2 active regions develop.

Today the sky was clear but high winds made the images a little unstable.  At the time of making these mages we still had frost.  AR1147 seems to continue moving around and developing some spots.  I also was able to see some activity at the following limb.

Well, finally the snow did melt and the clouds did disappear.  It has been a long time since my last image.  There was still a thin layer of clouds moving through and probably because of that did not see any prominances.  Here an image in CaK with AR 1147 in the center and AR1148 at the bottom right.  AR 1147 seems to be developping a number of small spots.

The day started off with broken cloud cover, but eventually it cleared up in time before the sun would be covered by the trees to the west of my observatory.  Here an image in Calcium K with Active regions 1140, 4 and 42.  A real nice spot in 1140 and a few smaller developing in 1142.

Happy New Year!   My head cleared up and I can think again and my crossed eyes are gone .
The couds broke and the 3rd was a clear day.  So here are my first 2 images in 2011.   Some faint but nice CaK prominances and a close up of Active Regions 1140 and 1142 with some nice spots.

I was ill between Christmas and New Year, spending a few days in bed.  Those of you who know me well know that I cannot function when my head is filled up with mucus.  So I only was able to make one  image in the last week of 2010 on the 28th.  Here my final image for 2010.  Not much activity and no Cak visible prominances.

the sky conditions did not improve over yesterday, so the atmosphere was pretty rough for imaging.  But snaow in the forecast for Christmas day, so i took some images again.