The Sun 26-12-08 - Boxing Day Sun is Active!

This was the first clear day of the Christmas holiday. It started cloudy and unpromising, but got progressively clearer from the east during late morning. After a walk along the canal to exercise the dog and shift some of the Christmas dinner excess I set up at 12.30 just as the sun was clearing the neighbours conservatory roof. At this time of the year with the sun so low in the south I have just an hour and a half window where I can image the sun before it dips into trees after clearing the neighbours buildings.

The wide arc of closely spaced arch prominences in the north east was still putting on a fine show with some amazing fine detail. There was another sizeable but faint complex of prominences in the SE and NW. A small active region could be seen right on the SE limb, this is possibly AR1009 forming. North to right and East at top in the following images....

The Sun 7-12-08

Pretty much a repeat of yesterdays activity with the main prominence arches still visible in the NE together with the dark surface filament. Much better visibility today and the detail in the proms is sharper.

The Sun 6-12-08

Frequently terrible seeing today meant that close up images of the prominences turned out less sharp. The sun struggles to clear the low altitude murk in our atmosphere at this time of year and this has a great impact on the quality of the final image. There was an impressive arch in the NE today with a fine dark filament on the limb immediately north of it. Lesser prominences elsewhere and most of those in the east.

Lunar Occultation of Venus and Conjunction too!

At 15.48UT Venus was occulted by the moon low in the south. I missed the start of the occultation while I was at work, but the weather was cloudy at the time so it was not visible. I left work 16.45, looked up and was amazed to see the thin crescent moon and Jupiter clearly on display with Venus hidden by the moons disk. I raced home to try and catch Venus appearing on the western side of the moon at 17.17UT. I was very lucky to catch Venus appearing again right on the edge of the moon, a beautiful sight! The trio of Jupiter, Venus and the Moon were all very close in conjunction and made a superb image. You can see two of Jupiter's moons top right either side of Jupiter. Canon 350D, Tamron 70-300 zoom, Canon 18-55 zoom. ISO 200, 4 secs.

Comet C/2006 W3/Christensen 21.13UT

This comet and C/2006 OF2/Broughton are the two brightest comets available for imaging at the moment at magnitude 10. I decided to try Christensen as it was well placed directly above the house near the constellation Cepheus. The evening looked good to start with, cold and clear skies all around. I was set up by 8.10UT with the Canon 350D and Equinox ED80 setup. I had intended on taking an hours worth of images, but had forgotten the intricacies of setting up the dastardly piece of Chinese gadgetry that is the timer remote release. Having failed to remember NOT to use the numbering sequence, but instead set the number of exposures to infinity I happily left the whole setup whirring away and returned to find it had only taken 12x 1 minute exposures - AAAAARRGH !!! Fortunately cloud had rolled in anyway so I would have been foiled by the atmosphere in any case. Thinking it was a waste of time I ran the 12 images through DeepSky Stacker to see what showed up and to my amazement there was a tiny fuzzy green blob sitting amongst a rich starfield!!! Green fuzzy visible just to the left of centre........

Cropped version - comet at centre

Conjunction of Venus and Jupiter

This was a trial run in advance of the highly anticipated conjunction of the moon, Venus and Jupiter in the early evening sky on Monday 1st December at around 5pm. I wanted to try and capture the planets reflected in the canal water and just about managed it before the canal was plunged into darkness. Jupiter at top and Venus below. Canon 350D, ISO 400, 8 seconds.

The Sun 28-11-08 - Large Filament in NE

Bright clear and sunny up to midday today then a milky cloud layer appeared from the south and ruined the seeing by the time I was imaging. Still managed to catch some decent images though just before the cloud rolled in for the rest of the day. Only one decent flame type prom on show in the NE with all the others being quite faint. The large filament first seen yesterday is still on show and a bit longer now in the NE close to the flame prom. No other surface detail was evident.

The Sun 25-11-2008 - Fine Feathery Proms

Gorgeous crisp, clear and cold sunny day today. First chance I have had to image the sun since the 7th November! Quite tricky to image now as the sun is low in the south all afetrnoon and reaches its max height just as it goes behind the neighbours tree. I also have our own trees to contend with so there was a lot of mount moving going on. All worth it though as there was a fine display of proms in the north west which showed very delicate detail in the DMK21 at high magnification. A small filament in the NE close to the only other main prom on display today. Great to be imaging/observing again !!

The Sun 7-11-08

Managed to get some images in between the fast moving clouds today. AR 11007 has just gone over the limb but a small remnant can still be seen in Ha and CaK on the SW limb. On the NE limb in CaK an area of plage brightening was showing up which may be a proto active region forming although there are no sunspots so far. Another possible area of plage lay to the north, but was very faint. There was a lovely tall flame prom in the east at 10.30 but by the time I was imaging it had reduced in size to a small bright claw (bottom right in image below). There was no surface detail in the Ha view.

The Sun 1-11-08 - AR11007 starting to decay

Got a brief window for observing this morning before 11am then cloud rolled in. AR11007 is still visible but the main spots and pores are much smaller and difficult to resolve. The same filaments from yesterday are still visible and there was a nice flame prom on the NW limb with other smaller groups of proms scattered around in the north and south.

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.