The Sun 29-4-09 - Sunspots!!

For the first time in a long while a decent set of sunspots (NOAA 11016) appeared this morning on the south west limb. The polarity suggests this is another SC23 sunspot group, so we are not really seeing a rise in SC24 activity yet but rather the last gasps of SC23. The plage was very bright visually in the PST and the active region developed quickly in size and shape. The sunspot group is Zurich Cao class. I was imaging at 16.20UT through high white cloud and the seeing was unbelievably bad with the surface in constant fluid motion and haze crossing at all times. It was very difficult to compensate for the constantly changing brightness levels and most video runs came out over or underexposed. High magnification imaging was basically pointless!