Relic Active Regions Closeup - 9th February

The sun may at times appear to be blank and featureless but there is often the subtle details, here is a old relic active region from a few rotations ago revealing itself as nothing more than turbulent plage.  Taken with the SM90 and 2.5x barlow with the PGR Blackfly IMX249 camera.

Solar Minimum Sunshine 9th February

Nothing to see here, move along...  Saturdays disk is fairly typical of a solar minimum sun - the disk looks blank.  There is a small region of very decayed plage from active regions several rotations ago but that it is it on the surface.  The proms were the star of the show, and looked fantastic through the SM90 with an 18mm Coronado Cemax eyepiece.  This image is a composite disk / proms shot with the PGR GH3 ICX814 camera.  Poor seeing and haze were the order of the morning to give imaging that extra challenge, but it is nice to see the sun rising higher and higher in the sky with each passing week.  Wonder how long these conditions will last until we see the signs of cycle 25 becoming more predominant and obvious in the solar northern hemisphere?

Ha Full Disk With a New Setup - 3rd February

A new year and a new solar setup.  As mentioned in previous posts I have a PGR Grasshopper 3 with a ICX814 chip that gives a 9.1Mp image which is great for full disks up to 1000mm focal length.  I just bought a Coronado SM90ii, a rather nice scope that is fitted with a Feathertouch focuser.

With it's 800mm focal length the full disk fits comfortably on the ICX814 chip with room to spare, and with no newtons rings visible no tilt is needed either.  Todays conditions were hazy at best and the sun is still skirting in the top of the trees, but with each passing week it gets higher and conditions get better.  Looking forward to seeing what this scope is capable of this year!

Tangerine in the Trees - 4th January

More of an opportunity to try out some new kit rather than go for a decent image of the sun here, but also the first chance to image for many weeks!  The day after solar perihelion there was a brief gap in the ever so persistent cloud we seem to have been graced with for months and I had a brief window before the sun started to drift back into the tree line and low sky haze.  I have just had a Skywatcher AZ Gti Alt Az mount, a dinky little thing that can be picked up with one hand that is controlled via wifi.  With a payload of 5kg I figured it would be an ideal grab and go mount for when there's not much time available.  Today I tried it with my Technosky 60mm f6 with a Lunt 50 etalon.  I was also trying out my new full disk camera - a PGR Grasshopper 3 9.1Mp with the Sony ICX814 chip; this camera offers a chip size of 3376x2704 pixels, as a result I also used a Coronado 2x cemax barlow to fill up the chip with the solar image.  The camera allows a full disk up to about 1000mm focal length so will have some interesting possibilities.  I was pleased that absolutely no tilt was needed with the camera.  Clouds had already started to drift back so there was little time to concentrate on tuning the etalon, but it did reveal AR2732, an equatorial spot from the tail end of cycle 24, a few small proms were also visible.  Just nice to see our star for a change!

More Signs of Cycle 25? - 18th November

Sunday mornings HMI image shows active region 2727 has developed a bit as it edges closer to the limb with a well developed bipolar spot group giving a sunspot number of 13.  Polar faculae are visible at both poles and at northern mid latitudes a very small couple of pores are visible.  This is visible on the AIA1700 image a region of brighter faculae.

And looking at the Gong image from Learmouth there is a brighter patch visible in Ha wavelengths.

While this activity from cycle 25 is not large scale at the moment it is clearly making itself visible and is worth monitoring in the days and weeks ahead.  Looking on the SOHO image it looks like a bit more activity may round the limb in the next couple of days.

AR12727 - The Last Sunspot of Cycle 24? - 17th November

The current HMI image is typical of solar minimum.  On the solar equator there is active region 12727, quite possibly the last sunspot grouping of cycle 24.  Magnetic bands on the solar equator are slowly cancelling out with this activity; the active region is also preceded by a patch of plage closer to the limb.  Polar faculae are also visible as bright points, here there are coronal holes currently too.

In the last couple of solar rotations there have been signs of activity in northern higher latitudes on our star that showed reverse magnetic polarity.  This reversal in polarity is what differentiates solar cycles.  

Given that cycle 24 was a double peaked, with the northern hemisphere preceding the southern hemisphere, it is rational to assume that we should start to see the first signs of cycle 25 in the solar northern hemisphere.  Indeed only a week ago a small emerging flux region recently had a few small pore spots that had reversed polarity compared to cycle 25.  Pretty much all of the solar models are predicting cycle 25 will be weaker than 24 with a lower average sunspot number.  

The international sunspot number forecast from the Royal Observatory of Belgium made at the start of this month suggests we will see an uptick in solar activity as cycle 25 kicks in early in 2019.  I would speculate that given these double peaked solar cycles and that cycle 24 had the northern hemisphere peaking over 3 years before the southern hemisphere, with cycle 25 forecast to be weaker that it may well be that the frequency of the hemispherical peaks may well be longer in between.  In which case the activity of recent rotations is indeed cycle 25 activity.   It will be interesting to see how the ROB updates it's next prediction early in December.  It could well be that we are already seeing the uptick in graph they are predicting.

Ha Full Disk - 11th November

It's been a while with one thing or another since I last managed to get some solar observing in, however Sunday afternoon offered some low altitude sun to look at.  While the disk is at first sight comparatively quiet it indeed tells a story; the small emerging flux region mid disk is the last relics of cycle 24 throwing out magnetic flux, however the northern polar crown marks the boundary of the northern jet stream where cycle 25 will kick off, and near the limb on the right hand side it is possible to see the remnants of a small spot with reversed polarity, typifying it to be the next solar cycle.  The shots were taken with double stacked Lunt 50 etalons and the PGR Chameleon 3 camera.  The proms below looked great visually in single stack mode.