Ha Full Disk 5th December.

Activity really is increasing on the sun, particularly so in the southern hemisphere which has just erupted into life over a couple of solar rotations.  I was fortunate to be able to observe as the forecast was for sleet all day, but turned out quite nice and predominantly blue skies.  The observing pad I created during the first lockdown is working well, and in conjunction with my 7 foot pier looking over a 6 foot fence to see the sun is quite feasible.  It has a bit of bounce to it and is only really suitable for smaller scopes, but, in winter, with the low sun this is not a problem.  As the sun gets higher in the sky in the spring I will replace the 7 foot pier with the 5 foot pier which is notably more stable.  This image was taken with a Lunt 50 etalon on a 60mm f6 scope and then double stacked with a Daystar Quark.

CaK Sun 22nd November

It's nice to see activity picking up again on the sun and I always like the alternative views in CaK.  The air was very clear and the prominences were quite easy to see at this wavelength.  

Ha Sun 22nd November

After what seemed like weeks of not being able to observe the sun, the weather was obliging on the 22nd.  I was keen to see the activity that had bubbled up in the southern hemisphere and I certainly wasn't disappointed.  Taken with a 50mm Lunt etalon double stacked with a Daystar Quark.

Ha Full Disk 11th October

The sun finally showed itself this weekend and with some cycle 25 activity kicking in I decided it was worth getting the scope out for a look.  The sun is now getting much lower in the autumn sky as we head towards mid October and the seeing even at 50mm aperture was not on my side, still it was nice to see our star and the developing activity from this new solar cycle.

AR12773 in Ha - 27th September

Taken with the same setup as the full disk, but without the Baader solar telecompressor and using the IMX174 camera for better sampling.  This little active regions looks nice, but magnetic field strength must be less than 1500 gauss as there are no sunspots formed.

Ha Full Disk 27th September

Another month has passed before I was able to take a look at the sun, too many things going on!  However there was a spotless active region visible so I was keen to make the most of the autumn sunshine.  Taken with the Lunt 50 etalon double stacked with the Daystar Quark and running at ~f22.

Cycle 25 Plage and Filaments - 30th August

Cycle 25 is certainly starting to get underway on our star.  While the magnetic fields may not be strong enough to form sunspots in this image, the are signs of turbulence in the form of both brighter page and also the darker patches of filaments - cooler clouds of plasma held aloft by magnetic fields.  This image was taken with the Coronado SM90 double stacked with a Daystar Quark and Airylab 2.8x telecentric and a PGR Grasshopper 3 camera with IMX174 chip.