Lets start with an overview from Saturday morning, in white light with a full disk shot made from two prime focus halfs with the SV80 and Baader front filter. The western limb is calm right at the moment, and AR1330 is a huge detailed solitary sunspot:

A close up of AR1330 reveals intricate details and plenty of solar granulation:

The next day the spot had changed considerably, and this is the view on Sunday again with the 5x Barlow. The seeing was much better and you can see the granulation far better here:

Nearby AR1333 has changed a bit too:

Here is a close up of the big spot AR1330 and by over exposing the image, we can see details inside the sunspots inner dark umbra right into the Umbral core:

Next we view the entire disk in Calcium K light, which shows tremendous white faculae details over the suns face and a good concentration around AR1330:

A close up with the 3x Barlow of AR1330 is next. What an amazing amount of detail we can see here:

Now onto some Hydrogen Alpha images with the Coronado 40mm. This is a close up again of AR1330

The white areas around the spot is the flaring regions. A Few large filaments can be seen on the other limb:

And finally the prominences were very active on Sunday, with this "Lifting Prominence" being ejected by the suns chromosphere seen here:

Thursday - Before the Great Winter Storm Hits

Early Thursday morning, we had one clear morning before a huge wet winter storm hit. And a massive development had taken place early in the week! A monster sunspot AR1339 had just come over the limb, and was so far in this current 11 year solar cycle, the largest active region so far. Its HUGE. I was able to get some great white light and calcium shots of it, and one was shown on NASA's web site the following day. Lets start with Thursdays full disk white light shot:

You can see how big this spot group really is here! This close up with the 5x Televue Powermate shows its true size and impressive detail:

Inside the spots umbras you see several light bridges cutting the umbras in two, and tons of white faculae around this monster. Just below it, AR1338 is no slouch either. This pair of spots forms an attractive grouping on the limb:

And just to its upper right was a small pair of spots that had no designation yet, but had a nice amount of granulation show up in the background since it is much nearer to the center of the Suns disk where granulation is far easier to see:

On the eastern side, we have a single solitary spot AR1334 of symmetrical form and beauty like a daisy with its filaments around its core:

Now lets get to the Calcium shots taken Thursday morning. Here is a full disk showing the huge spot once again in perspective:

A close up with the 3x Barlow of AR1339 shows tremendous faculae details:

AR1338 is a fine pair in Calcium as well:

And my final shot, also with the 3x Barlow is un named region to the right of AR1339:

Thanks for looking at this weeks exciting solar results, and with the new giant sunspot just starting to make a showing, the week ahead is looking exciting indeed!