Sun in HAlpha, White Light, Calcium K Uploaded 9/4/17 Daily Report For Monday, September 4, 2017
Images below are 1290 wide and non clickable
Rarely does a pair of huge sunspots appear on the Sun as solar minimum approaches. And one of them flaring wildly as it beams a shockwave of high energy particles towards the Earth. There will be some great aurora in a few days. Too bad it will be full moon.
I imaged the complex in all three wavelengths. For the white light shots, the six inch AR152 was used riding on the side of the 10 inch, and a Baader wedge and Continuum filter. Prime focus and 5x barlow were used. Seeing was 2 -3 / 5 and had some pretty amazing moments.
Next I captured the sun with the same scope, but stopped down to 4 inches and 1.5x barlow to make f/10. The calcium K filter was used and produced some stunning details in this wave length as well.
Finally, the Lunt LS100 4 inch was used at .5x, and 3x for close ups of the magnetic features and proms.
White Light:
Full disk - 2 part composite with the AR152 at prime focus.
Here are some 5x close ups of the two major spot regions:
This spot was so huge, it took two side by side shots put together to make the entire group!
The other group looked very unusual and was in fact flaring violently in Halpha at this time:
Next we put in the Calcium K filter, and stopped to 4 inches to make f/10 to make the filter a narrower bandpass:
And the other group is wild in Calcium:
Two more smaller groups, on each limb:
Finally, the icing on the cake - the Hydrogen Alpha images.
Full disk here:
And the deeper expsure on the limb to record the proms:
Close ups at 3x of the major spot groups:
And the flaring region in two shots taken 10 minutes apart:
Lastly - the proms on the limb were really great today!
