The Dutch Observatory

Started imaging today as soon as the sun rose above the trees to the East of my observatory.  The sun is crackling with activity today.  The two prominances from yesterday are even bigger.  Avoided starting an animation because I would not have the time to finish it (CE meeting today).  5 Active regions today: 1225, 26,27,28 and 31.  I also made two closeups using the Meade 2x barlow of the prominaces at the SW and SE limb of the sun with AR 1226 and 1227.

The features on the sun are getting bigger and bigger.  Today a giant snake filament accompanied AR1229, while a long filament streched out from West of this region to the North.  Yesterday I did an animation of the active regions in the southern hemisphere, today I made an 1/2 hour animation of features in the Northern Hemisphere.  AR1228, 29 and 1225 with the filaments around it.  The animation shows  some activity in the filament to the right of the regions and streching North.

   Click here for the animation

The sun has been busy and new sunspots are added each day.  Today we can see Arctive region 1229.  I made a full disk image of the sun as well as an animation of what is happening in half an hour in AR1226 – 27.  Not much but interesting to see the lobes arching accross. 

Memorial Day Monday and the clouds are variable.  A high layer of Cirrus clouds reduce the light coming from the sun and the first time in a while, I had to increase my exposure time to get my favorable histogram.  Here another image of the sun wit AR1224, 25, 26, 27, 28 as well the inverted processed image.  AR1226 has been very active as it was yesterday.  Yesterday I also made some close-ups of 1226 and some promenances, however the images made with the 5x barlow generated heavy streaks in even light processing, so I am not putting them up here, but I wonder why this is happening. 

After 3 days of not being able to image, the sun has changed a lot.  Active region 1226 is very active and expanding wit sunspots.  Also 1227 and 1228 are new.  Here a full disk image as well as a inverted image.

It looks like some more regions are developing but not very active yet.  Today captured in H-alpha and CaK. 

Have not captured a CaK image in a while, so today took the time to image also a CaK image.  The seeing was not very good and the dark areas showed a large amount of noise, so I resulted to only capturing the disk data for the CaK. AR1216 moving steadily to the western limb.

The area of the prominance visible on the 22rd, now shows a much broader coverage of prominances.  Today I captured a full disk image and a closeup of the eastern limb.  AR1216 still visible but not much activity otherwise.

The prom visible on the eastern limb in my 5/20 and 18 images is a lot smaller today, although it is still very high.  AR1214 and 16 can still be seen pretty good.  I like the way the processing came out today with good details.

Imaged the sun today with active regions AR1214-16 and 18.  It is getting real hot but I wanted to capture a half an hour animation of the huge prom.  Click the thumbnail of the prom to run the animation.