Happy New Year Everybody!
Well after what seems like weeks of constant rain here in the UK, the 1st of january actually dawned with clear skies and the possibility of some settled weather, if only for a couple of days... I got out the double stacked PST on the photo tripod to see what our star had to show on the year that marks the height of solar maximum. I was pleasantly surprised to see several spots, active regions, filaments and prominences. With each passing day now the sun is getting gradually higher and higher in the sky which is a good thing for solar observing as we're looking through progressively less atmosphere and also fewer trees. I liked this animation as shows very well that in a week or so the sun will be that bit higher in the sky and not in the branches of this particular tree, thus extending my viewing window! The seeing conditions were awful today and the limb of the sun can be seen to be boiling away as a result of out turbulent atmosphere, however, as always, some sun is better than none at all!