The Dutch Observatory

The last day of the year and the sky is clear!  Seeing however is not as good, caused by wind sheer with the 110 miles/hour winds in the jet stream.  Since we have another spotless day, I imaged today the remaining plage of what used to be AR2753, which is slowly approaching the western limb.  This is spotless day 646 since Solar maximum.

After 5 days of clouds, the Sun is out again.  However no spots.  The plage from AR2754 has turned to the far side, but we still can see the plage from AR2753.  Today full disk images in the three wavelengths as well as a close up of the remnant of AR2753.

Clear skies on Christmas day, but the seeing is not very good.  The second area I mentioned yesterday has now been named AR2754, so we have two active regions on the Sun today for a total Active Region Area of 20 millionths. We also have a few proms in the NE and NW as well as filaments in the NE, NW and SW quadrants. Having some Sunspots  is great for the other side of Earth where they will have an annular eclipse tomorrow.  Can’t wait to see the images of the Ring of Fire!  Today’s images include the full disk images in the three wavelengths as well as close ups of the regions.

Finally the clouds gave way to clear skies.  And guess what?  We have a new Active Region.  AR2753 was named  this morning.  In addition, we do have a some pores visible in the NW quadrant, which might also make it into spots.  We’ll have to see what happens.  To top it off, both areas are reverse polarized, making them consistent to C25 polarized areas.  So the spotless streak made it to 40 days, or 41 if one marks the days at 0000 UT.

Clouds and contrails started moving in.  Another Spotless  day. And today with 37 days, we surpassed the longest spotless streak since solar max. so far. So now we are on the road to the next milestone, the 3rd longest spotless streak from the last solar min. at 44 days. .  Let’s see if we can reach that.  Today is also the 639th spotless day since the solar maximum.  A few filaments in Ha in the Ne and NW and the reverse polarized area is still nicely visible not far from the NE limb.

Well, SWPC did not name yesterday’s area so it remained a pore, and today it’s gone. This means that today we are on the verge of surpassing the previous longest spotless streak during this solar minimum. This is based on SWPCs GEOA reports.  The region that came around the Eastern limb first looked like the negative pole was leading.  this changed during the day when a positive area developed leading the region, now indicating that the polarization is consistent with a C25 area.  The area can still be seen in the images as a faculae in the 540nm image and a plage in the Ha and CaK.

Clear Skies this morning!  Tomorrow would have been the day where the current spotless streak would have equaled the previous longest streak.  However, I did observe a small spot coming around the Eastern limb at a latitude of 22.5 degrees North. So I am afraid that we are coming short again for this and hopes of reaching an Ri of zero for December as well.  The region appeared to have C24 polarization.  So we’ll see if it is stable enough to make it.  We observed two proms as well as two filaments in the NE and NW.  Today full disk images as well as close ups of two proms at the NE and NW limbs.

Clear skies with good seeing.  Another spotless day.  Spaceweather.com reports that today we surpassed the largest number of spotless days of 2008, which was the yearly maximum for the previous solar minimum.  I still keep looking for the long streaks like those in the previous minimum. The current streak stands at 32 days and is maybe on its way to surpass the two previous longest streaks of this minimum at 33 and 36 days. Today the Sun was quiet.  Did not see any filaments but a few small proms around the Eastern limb.

Finally a clear morning again.  The Sun remains spotless.  A few small proms were visible in the NE and NE in Ha.

Clear but cold again today.  The Sun looks pretty much the same as yesterday. A small filament in the Southern hemisphere near the meridian and a few very small proms in Ha.