Micro-Flares - 19th January

While I observed the sun on Sunday morning I was pleasantly surprised to see the brightening of a small flare erupting away on the surface of our star.  Despite only being a small B6 class flare this was still the largest explosion that was happening at the time in at least a 4 light year radius.  The dots that are dancing around is dust on the camera sensor - time for a clean me thinks!  This animation represents a time period of about 12 minutes, which really does show how dynamic our star is!  It's the reason I like solar astronomy - the view is continually changing, something say the Orion Nebula or Andromeda galaxy never does; the closest we have is Jupiter which changes its appearance on a timescale of hours not minutes.  This animation was taken with the Coronado DS40 at f20 with the DMK31 camera.

Ha Full Disk 19th January

Ha-full-disk-colour, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

Activity seems to be increasing again on our star over the past couple of days, with several new active regions appearing over the limb. Looking at the prominences and the STEREO spacecraft data there would appear to be more to come too. The higher sun worked in my favour today, and I was able to use the DS40 to produce a 6 pane mosaic taken at f20 with the DMK31 camera. I really like all the intricate filaproms that are visible on todays disk!

CaK Sun 19th January

CaK-full-disk-colour, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

Now we are past the winter solstice, with each passing day the sun gets progressively higher in the sky, the days become longer and the nights shorter. Despite it only being just past the middle of january this really struck me today - I now have a viewing window of about an hour and half compared to a mere 45 minutes just a few weeks ago; in a few weeks time when we are in february I will be able to observe straight for a 3 hour run. The sun was a mere 16 degrees altitude when this image was taken, but was high enough to let me image with the 40mm at f20 with the DMK31 to produce a 6 pane mosaic. I have been tweaking the filter arrangement and this shows when viewed full size the spicule ring, spicules and proms quite clearly - quite rare in CaK images! It will certainly be interesting imaging later in the year with the sun much higher in the sky and with the 100mm scope.

AR11944 Calcium Sun

ar11944-cak-colour, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

Viewing the sun at near ultra violet wavelengths shows quite a different view of the sun than is seen in either white light or hydrogen alpha wavelengths. The white regions are areas of magnetic froth, with the brightest white spots around the sunspots representing the emerging flux region; an upwelling of the plasma flow before it returns to the solar surface along magnetic flux loops. The sun always has plenty to see in this wavelength, and I look forward to the sun being higher in the sky so that I can capitalise on the better seeing. This shot was taken with the 70mm scope at f12 with DMK31 camera, Beloptik Triband ERF and homebrew CaK filter with a DMK31 camera.

CaK Central Swathe 11th January

cak central swathe colour, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

The suns central belt was bubbling with magnetic froth visible white in this image. This was taken with the 70mm scope at f12 with the Beloptik triband ERF and homebrew CaK filter, DMK31 camera.

CaK Sun 11th January

cak full disk colour, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

The sun was looking very busy when in Calcium K wavelengths on saturday as this full disk image shows. Taken with the 40mm @ f10 with homebrew caK filter and DMK31 camera.

Ha Mosaic 11th January

ha-mosaic--colour, a photo by Mark Townley on Flickr.

A collage of 2 images, this image shows the Ha sun always has something of interest. Despite the low sun of january, with each passing day our star climbs higher and higher in the sky, and as it does slowly but surely it's light passes through less and less atmosphere resulting in an image with slightly more detail! Roll on spring and summer!