The Dutch Observatory

Another beautiful morning with no cloud to see.  The filament at 1529 seems to further degrade a little today, but to off-set this, the sunspots seem to have sructured themselves pretty nice.  In addition, AR1532 erupted with a C 8.8 flare as I was imaging.  At 14:04 (the full disk image) it was still very bright, but as I switched to the closeup with the DMK21 at 14:11 it was over for the most part.  Still a very active sun with some nice active regions.

A beautiful sun again today.  The large filament from yesterday has decayed a little and the large prominences from yesterday are gone for the most part.  However, the active regions are still very busy.  AR1532 has had two M class flares in the last 24 hours.  Today I also imaged using a 3x barlow.  A bit blurry with the scope and aperture I have.  See the inverted images of AR151532 and 1529,30,33.

A beautiful and active sun today.  The sunspots have grown and both 1529 and 30 are light bridged.  Some beautiful filaments, and the prominences were huge, about 8x the diameter of the earth, and “out of this world”.  A much different Sun today than a week ago! 

The sun got a little more interesting today.  A few more sunsports today, and the older once have increased their size a bit (AR1525,26,27,28,29).  Also a very nice prominence at the SE limb and a very interesting structure at the NE side.

After a break of about two weeks during which Romaine and I  took a short vacation, followed by some cloudy weather, today the sun was out again, clear and bright.  However the sun was pretty calm.  The last M-class flare happend two days ago and was followed by mostly B-class flares.  Today’s image shows the sun with AR1525 and 26 and a number prominences,  mostly on the southern limb

I imaged the sun before leaving for an outreach event today and processed this after I came back.  The active region around 1520 is growing very fast with small spots and becoming very interesting.  Today a full disk image and a close up of the region 1519, 20 and 21

A clear Sky, but the seeing was very much impacted resulting in longer exposure times.  Today AR1513,14,18, and the area around 19 and 20 is getting more interesting by the day with flares on the increase.  A full disk image today and a closeup of AR1519 and 20.

Another sunny day.  Today AR1519 and 20 are rotating more into view.  Looking at the structure of this region, this might get as active as AR1515 has been.  Although 1515 has been most active so far today.  the filament in the south has developped in a very high/wide structure.  Today I included the inverse images of the Active regions 1515 and the new region around AR1519.

Well the sun did it again.  A little after 23:00 UT AR1514 erupted with an X1.1  flare, while  AR1515 has kept busy with C and M class flares.  Keep checking for auroras for tomorrow.  Two regions have become visible on the eastern side of the sun.  And don’t forget to check out the filaments in the southern hemisphere.  Today includes an image of AR1519 which seems to be pretty active also.

I managed to create an animated movie of the solar activity around AR1514, and 15 from yesterday.  Somehow jpg’s created on one of my PCs creates a file which is incompatible with Registax that’s why i had so much trouble yesterday.  The animation is a 60 minute activity compressed in a few seconds.  This sequence is repeated 5 times to let you better observe what’s happening.  The opening scene is the end of an M-class flare west of  1514.  Than the activity shifts over to between 1514 and 1515 for a small flare.  Finally a larger flare erupts to the south of 1515.  Also, look at the nice filament in the south east of the region.  Very nice movement! Click the image below to go to the movie, and wait a minute or so to let it load.