The Dutch Observatory

Today clear and relative stable skies, before the clouds move in.  The seeing was around 3 to 4 and allowed me to make a few close ups in Ha as well in visible light with a green filter using the Stellarvue SVC80.  I was pretty happy with the result of this little scope showing some nice granulation.  AR1921 has increased it size now to 360 millionths and 18 has grown from 160 to 180 while 17 started decaying.

The number of active regions has increased to 10 and the largest, AR1921, has increased in size to 350 millionths. The number of flares however has not increased so much and is around 5 – 6 a day. Mostly C-class flares. It has been a while since we saw an M-class flare. Tried for some close ups today, but too much turbulence and too much atmosphere to drill through.

Finally, after two weeks of clouds and rain, a day where the sun showed its face with some relative stable seeing. The number of active regions has increased a lot, however the flare activity is not that high.  A nice prominence also visible at the eastern limb.  Imaged a full disk image and some close ups in Ha. Also imaged the active regions at the eastern limb in visible light through a red filter.

The sun on thanksgiving day. Very cold and very unstable skies. Tried to make WL close ups with the C11 but too much turbulence up there….

Thanksgiving morning.  It was the coldest morning thus far with 19 degrees but the sky seemed clear.  However the seeing was far from good.  However, since I got up I made a few runs.  Here the best one with the GRS.  Can’t wait for conditions to change.

A very cold morning with high thin clouds moving through.  A full disk image today with an Ha close up of the prominences at the Western limb a little north of AR1899.  A levitating and hedgerow prom with nice activity around it and AR1899 showing the Wilson effect.

Relative clear skies today, but jet stream did not cooperate for close ups.  Today a full solar disk image with 8 active regions. This will be my last image during this Carington Rotation.

Got up early this morning to attempt to image ISON.  However did not see the comet.  It was probably still in the trees behind my neighbor’s house.  So instead, I started imaging Jupiter.  Here another Jupiter IRGB image in less than average seeing.

Today we have 9 active regions!  And look at the size of them.  It is becoming more and more difficult to get any visible light clear frames from the sun spot close ups. The sun is getting very low and the jet stream does not help.  Tried very hard today, but no success.  The Ha images today have been taken with the DMKs and the SolarMax40.

Thursday the 14th, the jet stream gave us a small break and I took advantage of the brief time that the seeing was a little better.  Some images today of the major sunspot regions in visible light as well as  H-alpha.  Some of the close ups are in full resolution, others have been captured in 640×480.  AR1897 is still very big and active at over 600 millionth.