Thursday 7 August 2014

AR12132 Animation 4th august

When I looked at this active region through the telescope it looked so turbulent and angry I was sure it was about to go bang.  The whole area seemed to have bright plasma just pulsing to break out from beneath the solar surface.  I trained the 100mm PST mod on it at 2000mm focal length for a little over 10 minutes before the clouds rolled in again, alas in this time nothing spectacular happened - naturally I wanted an X class flare!  However it is possible to see the subtle but churning nature of the small dark plasma filaments being twisted and contorted by magnetic field lines.