When you look at the SDO image above you might be fooled into thinking something big is coming around the solar limb near the solar equator (left hand side). Sadly this is just the remnants of AR12699 from February, and all that will be visible now is some decaying plage, visible in CaK wavelengths, and possibly discernible in Ha wavelengths. For most people this will go totally un-noticed. It should be visible on the LASP solar irradiance plot as a slight up tick in the graph as the slightly brighter plage rounds the limb. When sunspots are visible the opposite effect happens with a trough or down tick in the graph as the cooler, darker sunspots actually reduce the total solar irradiance as they pass over the Earthward face of our star. Will be interesting to see over the Easter fortnight how visible this relic plage actually is.
The first day of spring here in the UK was a warm and bright day, quite different from the weeks of a long cold winter that went before. There was on and off high cloud and the seeing was far from steady, but it was nice to get the scopes out and see what was happening on our star. Not much really, a blank disk apart from a nice group of proms on the western limb. This is where the 8" HaT comes in, with it's ability to get in on the smallest of details as we head into solar winter and an absence of larger scale activity. It took a number of files being recorded to get something, and this is less than ideal, but certainly better than nothing. Taken with the Daystar Quark and the PGR Blackfly IMX249 camera.
The double stacked Lunt50 is going to be a bit of a work horse through solar minimum. The extra contrast double stacked etalons brings teases out any filaments whilst also highlighting the areas of brighter plage. Using the PGR Chameleon 3 it is possible to get the full disk all in one shot, saving the need for creating a mosaic.
Sunday 25th March marked the start of British Summer Time, with the clocks going forward an hour and the lighter evenings now with us. For once the weather forecast was promising and I was keen to put the new Tecnosky ED60 through it's paces. This little scope has a focal length of 360mm and with a an ED fpl-53 doublet promised to be a nice scope. I tried one visually for the eclipse in America in august and was very pleased so when one was available I picked one up with the intention of it being a quick grab and go full disk scope. Today allowed testing, and while 60mm is too small to show granulation on the sun it certainly presented a mottling that hinted at it. Views were also impressive in CaK wavelengths. Using a double stacked Quark both visually and photographically things were impressive encompassing a full disk in the eyepiece. Overall I am very pleased with the scope, it is light, compact and performs very well, with the 60mm aperture meaning it is very suitable to poor seeing conditions and also for travel being light weight. Be sure to click on the image for a full size view to see the finer details.
Over the past few days a small emerging flux region has developed in the suns northern hemisphere, initially this was a bright area in both Ha and CaK wavelengths, however now a small group of spots have developed. Unlikely to develop into anything more if there is a chance in the next couple of days to take a look is worth doing. As the area passes over the limb there is a good chance there will be prominences associated with it in Ha light.
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Ex AR12699 made it's return over the weekend, however sadly activity in the region has decayed significantly, and despite hopes there would be some sunspots left all that has returned is an area of decaying plage. This can be seen above in a crop from the latest SDO AIA1700 image. Here on Earth observers should be able to detects hints of this in Ha and also CaK wavelengths, where at higher resolution in white light it may be possible to detect it too. .
