It has been a while since i've seen a full disk with quite so much activity as this one, yes there are no sunspots or active regions, but there is plenty of plage activity and filaments that show signs of cycle 25 magnetism just below the surface at the higher latitudes, there is even some relic cycle 24 activity floating around the equator. All this is a positive sign the solar doldrums are slowly going behind us. Taken with a Lunt50 etalon double stacked with a Daystar Quark on a 60mm f6 scope. A Baader solar telecompressor was used to get the image on the chip of the FLIR Grasshopper 3 camera.
Using the 100mm Tal refractor, 2,7x Airylab telecentric and a Daystar etalon I closed in on the region of activity in the southern hemisphere. Sporting a filament showing the divide in polarity of a region of magnetism, and also a area of brighter plage were visible. Given their low latitudes this indicates it is activity associated with the new solar cycle.
The weather here in the UK really hasn't been great following summer like weather in spring, and now, autumnal weather in summer. Maybe autumn will see a return to summer? Fortunately some late afternoon sunshine allowed me some brief views of our star. Viewing in CaK at 60mm aperture with f16 at both the filter and chip revealed the sun has quite a lot of plage visible at the moment, and while this is only small scale it is abundant and indicative of the cycle 25 jet stream bands of magnetism sat just below the solar surface.
This filament was the only feature of note on the sun! However its presence and position associates itself with the sub surface cycle 25 jet stream, hopefully only a matter of time before activity picks up a bit! Taken with the Coronado SM90 double stacked with the Daystar Quark.
The sun is well, pretty much blank again! This image whilst not perfect, as the focus shifts in the right hand side of the image, is useful as I think i've worked out that the focus shift is caused by the thumbscrews on the etalon cell being too tight and then pinching the tube and hence optics. I've arranged a slightly different configuration and so are keen to try this out and see if it solves it.
To try and get more use out of the 8" Airylab HaT I decided to make some cardboard masks to stop down the aperture to make it more usable in less than ideal seeing conditions. I made 2, a 175mm and the one I used here which is 155mm. While the conditions we're ideal on one of the hottest days of the year it did produce a usable image and holds potential for greater use in the future.
Exposure time is brought down to about 3ms with the full disk when using the 100mm Tal at 60mm aperture to give f16 at both the filter and the chip. Plenty of fine detail is visible.
