The Dutch Observatory

I spend some more time on the animation from yesterday.  Added some color, sharpened a little more and added some relevant data on the side, including the time the respective frame was taken.  Click the thumbnail to load and start the animation.

Clear skies again and good seeing.  Solar Activity has gone up to Medium with 1 M-class flare and 5 C-class flares in the past two days. AR2665 is becoming a nice region with plenty of activity.  SWPC’s daily report showed 38 flare events yesterday.  Active Region Area has increased to 480 millionths and the region contains 14 spots.  In addition, the nice prom at the Eastern limb is still there with plenty of activity.  Today full disk images and close ups of the mentioned regions as well as the filaments.

Clear and good seeing before the clouds started to come in.  Solar Activity remains Low with one C-class flare in the last two days.  AR2665 is the only Active Region covering 310 millionths and 15 Sunspots.  The nice filaments of the last few days have badly decayed.  A very large prominence is visible on the Easter limb at approx. the same latitude as AR2664.  It measures 65,000 miles wide and reaches 22,000 miles above the solar surface.  I did capture 50 frames over a period of 50 minutes and spend quite some time processing this and created an animation.  One can see very nicely the intertwined streams of plasma moving around.

Here is the animated Gif of the aftermath of the C1.0 flare.  I cannot believe I am spending this time on a  C-class flare.  But it has been a while since we have had one and even longer for me to capture such a flare in an animation, or the aftermath of one.  Click the image to load and activate the animation. This is 15 minutes of flare activity in AR2665.

Clear skies and good seeing today.  This was going to be a quick observation today, but it turned out different.  Solar Activity was Very Low until AR2665 released a C1.0 flare.  My first image caught the end of the flare, so I had to capture the aftermath of the event in an animated gif which took a lot more time.  Solar Activity is Low with one C class flare in the last two days.  AR2665 covers an area of 140 millionths today and has 6 spots.  The filaments of yesterday are still there, but are deteriorating fast.  I did not observe any prominences at the time of my observation.

A few thin cumulus clouds with average seeing.  The spot that came around the limb yesterday has been named AR2665.  It has increased to an area of 140 millionths and has evolved into a Dao on the McIntosh scale.  Solar Activity remains Very Low with no C-class flares in the last two days.  In Ha the Sun looks great today.  The filaments visible yesterday still look beautiful and the prominences on the NW limb can still be seen,  while some small prominences at the Eastern limb can also be observed.

So the day started without a sunspot visible on the hemisphere.  However, by the time the Sun came in our view, a spot had emerged at the Eastern limb.  Needless to say Not-Named yet. The filaments from yesterday are still nicely visible and the Prom at the NE limb has today become a nice filament. The Proms at the NW limb are still pretty active. Full disk images today as well as close ups of the mentioned regions.

Another spotless day.  Spotless day 78 since solar max.  Solar Activity remains Very Low.  Despite no spots visible, the Sun still shows the nice filaments from two days ago.  The northern one is some more decayed but the Southern looks terrific.  Prominences are visible in all quadrants to celebrate Independents Day!!  The close up in WL of the Eastern limb does not show any plages, but in CaK a few can be seen across the disk.  Full disk images today as well as close ups of the mentioned regions.

Clear Skies this morning before the clouds and storms rolled in.  The sole active region AR2664 is getting close to the Western Limb and will disappear in the next day or so.  The region area for today is 50 millionths while it only contains 1 spot.  Solar Activity remains Very Low today.  A very nice combo of filaments are seen in the Northern hemisphere as well as another filament at the SW quad.  The Western limb shows a few nice prominences.  Today’s full disk images in the three wavelengths as well as close ups of the mentioned regions.

I did see a ghost ring developing in my full disk Ha images over the last 1/2 year.  I contacted Meade support and asked them if they could indicate what the problem was.  The reply was that they did not see the ring and they thought the image was pretty good.  Well Tim Geib was so good and offered to stop by on a clear day with his Solar Max 60mm etalon and his blocking filter.  I made two reference images using the same gain and gamma but varying the exposure time so both images would cover the same histogram max. The one with my blocking filter needed an exposure time of 2.142 ms. and the one with his filter did the same job with 0.87 ms., a 2 1/2 times faster.  I then processed both images the same way in AS2. this was followed with a simple wavelet adjustment in Registax6 so the image taken with Tim’s filter showed some good contrast (Fig 2-A, first image). Now I went back to the image taken with the old filter.  Fig. 1-A (second image) shows the raw image as it came from AS2. Fig 1-B (third image) uses the same wavelet settings as Fig 2-A and shows no contrast.  I had to push various filters in Registax and  PS a lot to come up with the image Fig 1-C (fourth image) which represents approx. what I had been doing for the last 6 months or so. Needless to say the life time of the blocking filter is very much restricted.  So I ordered a new filter which arrived earlier this week and will have the old repaired after the Great American Eclipse.