The Dutch Observatory

Cloudy forecast for today, but a few breaks between the clouds.  Only a full disk image today.  Activity has picked up a bit overnight, so far 5 C-class flares, and the 28 spots today occupy 200 millionth.  Some interesting filaments and a group of Prominences at the NE limb today.

Clear Skies again this morning.  The Sun seems real quiet.  There are only 6 Active Regions, but the 9 spots reported, only cover an area of 70 millionth.  The last reported C-class flare was on the 23th. and since then only 4 B-class flares occurred.  The Sun is really taking a breather.
However, prominence that shows at the Eastern limb, looks really intricate and pretty.

Clouds all morning, but some clear skies when I came back from town.  However the Sun was still in the tree behind the house and was covered by thin clouds.  Here a full disk image including some tree branches and thin clouds. (a stack of 21 hand selected frames).   The Sun is really getting quiet. Today we still have 4 Active Regions, with a total of only 9 spots which cover only 70 millionth and we registered only 2 C-class flares, not associated with the regions.  A quiet sun with a few filaments. 

Where are those rainy and cloudy days good for?   To reprocess and  process the images which have not been processed yet. The seeing that night was terrible, but I am glad with the way the reprocessed series came out.   Here an overview of half of the double mutual event on January 28th when Io got eclipsed by the shadow of Europa.  The full double event can be seen in the animation. Click image on right for the animation.

I had a little time this morning with clear skies.  However, the seeing was terrible.  Only a full disk image today, too unstable and too cold for close ups (21 degrees with windshield of 12) .  The Sun shows a bit more activity today with 7 small active regions except 2282 which still shows a size of 140 millionth.  Total count of spots is 25 and three flares in the last 24 hours out of 2282.

Clear Skies early this morning, and had to hurry to setup before a solid front moved in.  I missed capturing a clear image of  the Sun by 5 minutes, so today an image I took of the Sun when the Sun was still behind the trees and the clouds started to roll in already.  Today’s Sun is a continuation of the run to very low activity.  Today the same number of active regions but the number of sunspots is reduced to 10 covering a mere 180 millionth.  However,  I have to say AR2282 was able to produce one C-class flare.  But the Sun shows very low activity in the last week and especially today.

The activity of the Sun is very low today.  Three active regions with 19 spots covering a total of a low 250 millionth.  No flares have been recorded in the last two days. The high filament of a few days ago is gone and with it the beautiful prom.   Captured today a full disk image only through, and between clouds while the temp was just above freezing.

Wow, the Sun’s activity is really slowing down.  Only 3 active regions with a total sunspot area of only 250 millionth and the Sun produced only 3 B-Class flares in the last 24 hours.  The large filaprom is still beautiful and today I was able to get more detail in my image of the 50,000 miles high structure.  Since SDO is now 5 years active, I checked back what the Sun did 5 years ago and the Sun was also very quiet. We were watching two active regions: AR1046 and 48 with a size of 70 and 10 millionth respectively which produced two C-class flares.  This all is in stark contrast to the week of October 24 2014, when we had 5 named active regions  with a total of 76 sunspots covering an area of 3090 millionth and we were leading up to the 27th when AR2192 by itself produced 13 C-Class Flare, 7 M-Class flare and even 2 X-Class Flares.

Sunny Skies but windy.  Today’s Sun is really calm.  4 Active regions with only 19 Sunspots total covering only 290 millionth.  Wow that’s small.  Also only two C-class flares in the last two days.  The nice thing is still the huge filament associated with AR2280.  It reaches 50,000 miles high, or six times the size of Earth.  Its beautiful to observe at the Western limb of the Sun.

Another sunny day with some thin high clouds moving through.  The Sun is beautiful with the large filament now extending to form a very high FilaProm.  No new active regions today and the sunspot area has fallen to 400 millionth, while the number of spots within the regions has decreased to 20.  Only 2 flares in the last 24 hours and only in the active regions.