The Dutch Observatory

The sun made a very dramatic display today with three large prominences and an almost 500,000 mile long filament.  A closeup of the filaproms is very dramatic. I wish I could have spend more time imaging today, but we had an outreach event.

Well my PC decided to shutdown and reboot to install changes in the middle of the capture session while I was imaging in a 3 minute hole in the clouds. Found a smaller area later to do the closeup of AR1338 and 39 and 44.

Cloudy forecast, but I was able to get some images before the clouds arrived, and finished up with some closeups made half through the clouddeck. Not enough time to get a prom image.  However, a beautiful display of filaments going all over in the 1341, 42, and 43 triangle.

The active regions 1338 and 39 just passed the central meridian and cover a large area of the sun. In addition the 1341,42, and 43 form a nice triangle. A hedge-row prom at the eastern limb shows activity coming around from the backside.

I’ve been following AR1338 and 39 since they popped up at the Eastern limb about 6 days ago and imaged the duo every day since then.  Today another image of the two as well as an image from 1339 by itself with a 3x barlow and the whole disk as usual.

Active Regions 1340,41,42 are turning today in nice view and these regions together with 1338 and 39 are promising some nice views this week on the Sun, provided that the weather holds out so we can image this.

The skies were clear today but very unstable in the lower atmosphere, but the Jetstream was way up North and West.  Both AR1338 and 39 are growing. the largest sunspot in 1339 as well as Ar1338 have a nice light bridge extending accross. A new region is becoming visible at the limb next to 1339. Prom activity has slowed a bit down. (waiting for the big blast from 1339?)

Yesterday AR1339 released an X-flare in the direction of Venus and Mercury. We’ll keep an eye out for more flares when the spot is turning towards Earth. Would love to image another CME but no luck today.

Today the sunspot areas 1338 and 39 have moved from the eastern limb and are becoming nicely visible.  Especially 1338 showed some very bright C-class flares when I was observing/imaging.  1339 Is very big in size and is estimated 25,000 by 45,000 miles and earth fits in some of its biggest spots.  Get ready for some activity in the next few days.

All of you who have known me for some time know that I eagerly followed NASA’s Mars Phoenix mission.  This led to really wanting to attend the launch of the next Mars mission which has gone through some delays.  However, the date has come and “Curiosity” is scheduled to be launched on November 25th at 10:21 a.m. I am very pleased that my official invitation for this launch has arrived today, so we will not be spending Thanksgiving this year at home, but at the Cape.