The Dutch Observatory

A sunny morning today allowing me to make a few solar images early on.  A full disk sun today and a few close ups.  AR 1777 and the duo 1778 and 80.  A nice but not very active sun today.

Another beautiful Sun today.  I had a little time to image before the clouds rolled in. 8 Active Regions, AR1770, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77 and 78, and I was able to get a closeup of 1775 and 1777 with the C11, combined with the Baader 3.8 and a red filter.  One was made with a 3x barlow, the other with a 1.5x. 

Another beautiful Sun today with 7 Active Regions and AR1777 did only produce so far 4 B and C class flares.  The circular filament around AR1777 from yesterday has deteriorated a bit, but it has become quite an interesting structure, and the plagues around it have expanded.  Also AR1775 looks quite interesting. Quite a nice Sun to observe.

After a few days of rain, clouds and one day of outreach, finally a day where I could image again.  a nice Sun today with 7 active regions, a number of nice prominences and filaments and AR1777 whic erupted an M class flare earlier in the day, was encircled by a nice circular prominence

When I setup to observe the sun this morning I saw this huge prominence lifting off.  I could not setup fast enough to start imaging the fast eruption.  Twenty minutes later it was getting pretty dim and noisy  for my camera and scope, so I stopped.  I have problems with the transfer of my YouTube caccount to Google, so could  not post it there.  Ended up making an animated gif and put it in my blog.  Click here to link to the animation.

Another day with variable clouds and an opportunity to image the sun between some clouds.  Today the sun was quiet and showed one named Active Region.

Today is the beginning of a new Carington Rotation Nr. 2138 which ends on July 8th.  The clouds decided today to give me some time to image.   Only one active Region today: AR1765, a few prominences around the disk and a nice filament streching accross the southern part of the sun.  So far, it has been quiet today, but I am glad I could see the sun at all!!!

It has been a while since I took some images of the Sun.  The weather has been pretty bad.  But this morning I was able to get enough data for a few images.  Here a full size image of the sun with some nice prominences and filaments as well as a closeup of AR 1765.  The sun has been pretty quiet since the M-class flare af a few days ago.

Sometimes when I meet a person who shows a real interest in astronomy and especially the Sun, I offer them to get a personal Solar Imaging session in which they capture the image, and process it all by themselves using my equipment.   Last Friday a youngster by the name of Christian Johnson came over with his mother, two twin brothers and his teacher to image the Sun. He handled the scope (focussing and positioning the sun in the center of the chip) Selected the camera settings to his liking (gamma, gain, and exposure time based on the histogram) and make the capture run. He than processed the image in Registax and Photoshop himself with a very nice result for a first time solar image!!!