The Dutch Observatory

Clear skies, with average seeing.  Solar Activity remains Very Low with no flares in the last two days.  Still two regions today with two spots.  The SW and SE limbs look great with some beautiful prominences and a nice filament at the NW Limb.

Clear skies with average seeing.  Solar Activity is Very Low with no flares in the last two days.  Two Active Regions, AR2685 and 86, each covering an area of 10 millionths.  Total spots for today is 3. While the regions are very small, we see some very nice prominences at both the SE and SW limbs.

Had a little time before leaving for the ALPO / GRAM meeting in Athens.  Clear Skies and seeing was OK.  Solar Activity remains Very Low with no flares in the last two days.AR2685 has decayed to 20 millionths and has only 1 sunspot.  AR2686 is still at 20 millionths and 2 spots. Some nice proms are visible at the NE, and NW limbs and the NE prom extends into a filament onto the NE quadrant.

Clear Skies this morning. Solar Activity is Very Low with no flares in the last two days.  Both regions have deteriorated a little.  Today, Active Region AR2685 covers an area of 50 millionths, and AR2686 covers 20 millionths, while the spot count has gone down to 2. Both areas are Hsx on the McIntosh scale and the Hale class is alpha.  Some nice prominences can be observed at the NE as well as NW limbs and a few nice filaments can be seen in the SW quadrant.

Clear skies with a few wind gusts and average seeing. Solar Activity for today is Very Low with no flares in the previous two days.  We now have two active regions AR2685 covering an area of  60 millionths and AR2686 covering 30.  Total spot count is 3.  The nice prominence we have been following for over a week is still nice as it arrives at the Western limb, while the huge Prom/filament from a few days ago had deteriorated to a small filament.  Another nice Prominence is visible at the NE limb.

We had some cloudy and rainy days giving me time to process the animation of the prom on the 20th.  Here two versions, the left is a fast moving animation showing pretty good the half an hour activity going on in the prom.  The second on the right runs slower and allows you to follow individual streams of plasma as they flow along the magnetic field of the about 40,000 miles high and 170,000 miles wide structure.  Please click the thumbnail below of the appropriate version to load the animation.

Thin Cirrus clouds and wide spread contrails today.  However managed to get a relative clear area to image. Solar Activity is Medium with two M-class flares in the last two days.   Following twelve spotless days which were interrupted briefly for one day by a tiny spot, we see a relative nice sized area coming around the Eastern limb. The huge prom from yesterday has now turned partly earth side so we can nicely see how a prominence transforms into a filament when it levitates over the earth facing surface. We also see a nice prom following the new area.  To round it off for today, the three areas with filaments are still nicely visible and have not seen much deterioration.

Another clear day with good seeing and another spotless day.  A number of filaments in Ha can be seen, but the jewel of today’s sun is the large prominence at the NE limb, which was already visible yesterday.  I had the time today to spend some more time on this than yesterday, and captured data for a 1/2 hour progression animation.  However, I will need some more time to process this, so no animation post today, but an image of the prom.

Had to wait for clouds to move through and then the seeing was average.  Another spotless day.  However, a very nice filament at the meridian and a huge prominence at the NE limb are visible in Ha.  WL and CaK do not show a lot going on.

Clear skies with average seeing.  Today we reached another milestone.  NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center reported another spotless day, which in my database shows as number 100 since solar max. for Solar Cycle 24.  In addition to the nice filament, we have a few nice prominences.  Pretty soon the longitude of the old AR2682 and 83 will come around the Eastern limb again.  So far the forecast for them is not exciting.