When I got up this morning the sun was blank, typical of solar minimum. However throughout the day an emerging flux region has rapidly developed into a crackling bipolar active region with 2 rapidly growing sunspots. It will be interesting to see how this develops more in the days ahead. Taken in the near ultraviolet in calcium wavelengths (393nm) with the 40mm f10 scope, 2x Cemax barlow, homebrew CaK filter and the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
Sundays session also gave me a transit of this turbo prop going from Manchester to Jersey. There are only 3 frames where it is in shot so not much point of an animation. The seeing was awful too in the shorter wavelengths, but was nice to catch the surge prom from the active region in this image.
Jetting off to the sun! Flight LS271 Leeds Bradford to Alicante put on a nice transit for me this morning whilst I observed the sun with the Coronado SM90 double stacked with a Daystar Quark. Wish I was flying off to warmer climes like the people in this plane.
First trial today of double stacking the SM90 with my flat 50mm Lunt etalon. It works well even if there is little to see on the Sun at the moment!
Using the Coronado SM90 double stacked with a Daystar Quark to enhance the contrast I zeroed in on the active regions that are passing over the limb. These really have become quite active for solar minimum over the past couple of days, so it was nice to get a view of them before they departed properly.
Less than ideal conditions mean that the disk isn't as sharp as I know it can be, but it has still came out ok. Taken with the 60mm scope at f15 with the homebrew CaK filter and the PGR GH3 ICX814 camera.
There was the smallest of proms on the solar limb on Sunday, with a wispy filaprom associated the smallest of decayed active regions. This is the bounty that solar minimum delivers! Taken with the SM90 double stacked with a Daystar Quark with the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
Zooming in on the region of decaying plage using the 100mm scope somewhere up around 2000mm focal length with the homebrew CaK filter and FLIR CH3 camera. The Airylab SSM was used to only harvest the best frames with the unstable polar maritime airmass that was over the UK this Sunday.
Viewing the sun in Calcium wavelengths showed a number of areas of plage around the solar equator that mark where active regions from previous rotations. These are the remnants of activity from solar cycle 24. Taken with a 60mm scope at f15 with the homebrew CaK filter and a FLIR GH3 ICX814.
Double stacking the Coronado SM90 with a Daystar Quark works well to really narrow the bandwidth and bring out the contrast in hydrogen alpha images. This has the effect of making the filament much darker but also bringing out the brighter plage from the remains of a previous active region. Taken with the FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
The sun is quiet at the moment, a small filament when looking closer reveals a region of plage that shows relic active regions from previous rotations. Apart from that very little is going on, even the prominences are small. Taken with the Coronado SM90 with a FLIR GH3 ICX814 camera.
A quick CaK full disk in between the passing clouds, seeing was awful and very difficult to find focus. Still nice to see the active regions we currently have, even if the image is soft. Taken with the 40mm f10 and 2x cemax barlow, grasshopper ICX814 camera. Hoping for some better images tomorrow!
Happy whilst observing on Sunday morning to see the silhouette of a plane pass in front of the sun. I quickly checked flight radar and was surprised to see it was Icelandair flight FI450. Taken with the SM90 double stacked with the Daystar Quark and PGR Grasshopper 3 ICX814 camera using 2x2 binning.
Using the same setup as in the previous image the sky was blue for long enough to try a bit of a timelapse, only 8 minutes here but it shows the sun doesn't stay the same for long!
