The Dutch Observatory

Another day with clear skies!  The NE-region from yesterday shows a faculae and a few pores in WL.  SWPC calls it “small  intermittend pores”.  Also visible are the plages in the SE and Cntr West.  Today full disk images as well as some close ups with the ASI174MM and the ASI120MM of the mentioned areas.

Clear skies with good seeing.  It has been about a week with clouds, rain, clouds, rain, and so on.  But today the Sun shows that it is still spotless.  We see some prominences and plages near the Eastern rim, but no spots can be seen.  Both areas seem to have Cycle 25 polarization, and the spotless streak stands at 28 days.  Full disk images today in the three wavelengths and close ups in Ha of the two mentioned regions.

Another spotless Sun today with a nice plage visible near the meridian in Ha and CaK, as well as a filament extending to the NE.  Full disk images today and close ups in Ha and CaK of the mentioned area.

A Short Summary of CR2230

Carrington Rotation CR2230 covered the time period from 2020-04-24 1529 UT – 2020-05-21 2100 UT.
The observations can be viewed in my Solar Archive for CR2230 which can be accessed at: http://ceastronomy.org/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=49751

The rotation brought us 21 spotless days, with a spotless streak of 20 days which was interrupted for 6 days while showing 4 Active Regions.  AR2760 emerged on 4/26/2020 and lasted the entire 6 days with the exception that it disappeared for a short time on 4/29.  Another region which was named AR2761 showed only for part of a day one day earlier.  All regions were very small at 10 millionths, with AR2761 being the exception by increasing to 20 millionths on 4/30 and 5/1.   The maximum Wolf Number of 35 was reached on 5/1 when both AR2760 and 63 were reported with 2 spots each.  Overall Solar Activity remained Very Low with a Total Rotation Active Region Area of 100 millionths, while the rotation increased the spotless days count since solar maximum to 759 spotless days. Finally, during the period SWPC reported two A-class, two B class, and no C-class flares.
This time I would like to feature some combination images showing some prominences at the SW rim.

Clear Skies,
Theo Ramakers

Mostly cloudy skies today with here and there some clear skies between them. The Sun is again spotless but now shows a few nice prominences at the NE and SW limbs. Imaging was very much compromised today with only a few seconds of exposure time here and there and far in between. But I captured two full disk images today and a close up of the mentioned proms in the NE.

An Analysis of the Transition From Solar Cycle 24 to Solar Cycle 25

I wrote a paper about the current Solar low.  More specifically how the current transition stacks up against transitions between other Solar Cycles.  This paper was published in the 2020 Winter issue of the Strolling Astronomer, ALPO-Astronomy’s quarterly paper.  I am posting it here for those who follow me, and have not had a chance to read this, so they can get a better idea what the current Solar minimum indicates. Follow the link here to read the paper as a pdf document.

Clear skies during my observing session with average seeing.  Another spotless day for the Sun.  The two proms at the Eastern limb are still there and one can see a plage associated with each of them near the rim.  Both of them seem to have Cycle 25 polarization.  Its worth to keep an eye on these two.  Full disk images as well as close ups in Ha of the two proms/plages.

Clear skies, with variable seeing.  Another spotless Sun today but with a few proms at the Eastern limb.  I made a close up of the SE prom which was skinny and high, but the second one in the NE was low and wide.  Almost always something to see.

Clear skies with good seeing conditions.  Today is a special day since it is the 750th spotless day on the Sun since solar max as reported by SWPC.  In fact, the sun is real quiet today.  The only item I could make out was this very small prom at the SW limb visible in the full disk Ha image.  For the rest it was a blank disk, even in CaK.

Clear skies with good seeing.  Another spotless day on the Sun.  This time we did not see any prominences and only a filament in the Southern hemisphere in Ha.  So the Sun is really quiet today.  Today only full disk images.