The Dutch Observatory

A nice day again with a busy sun.  8 Active regions today including AR1314, 16, 17,19, 24,25, 27,28.  A whole disk image today with a closeup of AR1314 and 19.  Getting ready to go to San Fransico tomorrow.

Today’s images start a new Carington Rotation: 2116.  Very cloudy today with low clouds moving fast, but I was able to shoot 216 frames through a small gap.  The images still showed some serious clouds movement, but Registax 5 took care of that.  Active Regions in abundance: AR1314,16,17,19,21,23 and 24.  AR1319 still looks very impressive and 24 is following suit.

We did reach out to the Chamblee Middle School today with a Solar Program.  So today only a whole disk Sun image  from Chamblee.  A lot of activity today with two new active regions 1323 and 24.

Active Region 1319 is getting real complex.  Sunspots are popping up and flares are all over.  This makes the area which includes AR1214, 19 and 16 very interesting.  Today a closeup of this region and a whole disk image.  Images taken with my Meade 5x barlow create too much movement because of atmospheric impacts in the image to process well the 2x does well, so I might have to look for a lower magnification to get closer images than these.

Today I could observe and image the Sun again as I usually do.  Made a nice full disk image today and a closeup of regions 1314, 19 and 16.  Very nice display here. See how active it is getting?

The second day of the STEM Festival was even busier than the first day!  Boy they kept us going. there were well over 1000 students, parents and teachers in attendents over the two days.  When it was all over, I made this image of the sun with a ton of active regions.

Today we did participate in the Georgia Department of Education’s STEM Festival.  700 science students were bussed in from all over the region to particpate.  Many of them were able to see the activity on the sun today in visible light and H-a, which was spectacluar with the large number of spots and some beautiful prominences.  During the event I managed to take an image, but the scope was not tracking good, so i did not make a Prom image.  Here the sun from the STEM Festival with Active Regions 1312,13,14,16,17,18, and 19.

Today it was supposed to be cloudy, but around noon the clouds broke open a little. But by the time I was set to image only a few small holes allowed me to capture about 30% of the frames I normally use.  So here an image of the sun under bad conditions.  However,  look at the number of active regions!  AR 1309,12,13,14,16,17,18 and 19!!!Tomorrow when the skies clear, we should be able to make some nice images of the sun at the Georgia Department of Education’s STEM festival.

Well, yesterday as part of my imaging session I did also make a close up of the prom at the SE limb but did not publish it.  Since today its cloudy, I might as well.  So here the Prom from yesterday taken at 16:37 UT

An early cloud band moved in 15 minutes before the sun rose above the trees to the east, but I found a peek hole big enough for one whole disk image. Had to process it in Registax 5 to make the alignment work.  Active region 1305 is now on the backside, but left a nice prominence at the limb.  The eastern limb also showed some nice activity.  After 2 hours the skies broke some more and I went out and imaged the closeups.