The Sun 31-10-08 - AR11007 Appears!

AR11007 has appeared out of nowhere on the north limb today and is another SC24 sunspot group, the fourth this month! Looks like SC24 is well under way. The bipolar sunspots were easily visible in Ha and CaK light. There was also a small proto-AR close to the east limb which may develop in the next 24 hours. Proms were every small but there were some nice dark filaments in the north and south polar regions.

The Sun 18-10-08 - Surprise! Massive Prom

A lovely sunny morning today although cold and windy with swirls of falling leaves gusting past. Having set up the imaging kit I slowly focused the PST Ha while watching the image on the laptop. The IC Capture software had been set up to expose for proms and the edge of the sun came into sharp focus. I scanned the round the limb looking for detail when WOWZAAAAA !!! a truly monster prominence appeared which filled the screen so much I had to zoom out! A huge complex arc of plasma was heading over the NW limb. I put up an early alert on the CN solar forum and before long pictures from other UK solar imagers were rolling in. Managed a brief 10 minute Live broadcast before the clouds and drizzle rolled in for the rest of the day.

The Sun 16-10-08 - AR11005 and all the others!

I have lost track of which active region is 11005 now there are so many visible! I think its still the large one on the central meridian as it is the most developed - no sunpsot now though. Small proms on the limb with the tallest prom shown below. For the whole disk shots east is at top and south to left.

The Sun 12-10-08 - Active Region 11005 !

Superb and unexpected day of clear skies and sun practically all day. A new active region (11005) which appeared yesterday is putting on a real show with large sunspots and small pores plus plenty of plage detail in the CaK views. Ha shows a nice sprawling set of fibrils and flux around the sunpsot group. I also managed a first light with the Intes solar wedge today mounted on the Vixen FL 115s refractor. Filters used on the wedge included the ND3, Solar Continuum and UV/IR block. This gave a pleasant apple green tone to the view (largely courtesy of the continuum filter) but the detail in the sunspot group really popped out and granulation was very clear - cannot wait to image in white light with this setup!

The Sun 9-10-08

Fairly quiet today with just 3 main proms on show including two arches in the south and east and one larger complex arch in the west. There was a very small patch of brightness in the SE which may turn into a new active region if it develops further in the next 24 hours.

The Sun 5-10-08 - AR11003 still visible

After an unpromising morning of cloud and rain the skies cleared from the north west during the afternoon and I was able to get some images of active region 11003 and the nearby prominences between 17.01 and 17.22 BST. The AR still seems to be growing at the moment and reports of visible sunspots were reported this morning.

The Sun 3-10-08 - New SC24 active region in SE

A new, potentially Solar Cycle 24, active region has formed in the south east today. It is extremely small and there is no sunspot at the moment, just a few short fibrils. This AR will either fade quickly or produce a sunspot group and grow over the next week. The proms were extremely small also with just one short spike in the east with a nearby low arch and some short spicules in the north.

The Sun 2-10-08 - Proms in the East

Windy, showers and fast moving cloud today made the imaging tricky, but a clear gap passed over at 2pm. I just used the DMK41 this time to save on time swapping over cameras plus the main proms all formed a nice tight group in the east and the DMK41 is good at capturing pleasant wide views of closely spaced features on the sun with the 2x barlow and 1.6x imagemate combination. Stephen Ames on the CN Solar Forum was also sketching at the same time and made the comparison montage below.

The Sun 1-10-08 - Low activity

Windy and cold today, but there is plenty of blue sky between the light showers. Pretty low activity at the moment with some brighter CaK regions in the east (top of CaK photo) which probably relate to the spots mentioned on Spaceweather yesterday. Only small proms appear around the limb and there is no significant Ha surface activity.