Vern’s Weblog

A new region rotated over the east limb a couple days ago, region 10969. Current Zurich classification is Hsx, 90 millionths solar hemisphere in area (273 million sqare kilometers — about half the surface area of the Earth). Here is a view of it from 11:22 am MDT this morning with Celestron Nexstar 11 and Phillips Toucam 840K at cassegrain focus.

Sky was partly cloudy, temperature about 80°F, no wind, transparency very good, turbulence about 6/10, location Louisville, CO

The region 10963 has been growing rapidly in size, number of spots, and complexity. (See http://www.raben.com/maps/EarthSideSolarRegions.html). NOAA has the area at 530 milli-hemispheres as of last evening which is around 1.6 billion square kilometers or about 3 times the entire surface area of the Earth (both land and sea).

Image was acquired with Celestron Nexstar11 telescope and Phillips Toucam 840K webcam 11:09 to 11:11 am MDT. Images were aligned, stacked, and wavelet sharpened with Registax4. The sky was mostly clear, 2-4 mph wind, some occasional high thin clouds, turbulence 6/10, temperature was 74°F, location was Louisville, CO.

The sky was clear for a while today so I took an image of region 10961 with the Toucam. Region 10961 hasn’t had much activity, but hey is large and has some spots — it doesn’t take much to get us solar fans excited during off season.

Image taken at 1:23 pm MDT with Celestron Nexstar11 telescope and Phillips Toucam 840K webcam. Temperature was 88°F, wind was 2 to 5 mph, sky was clear, turbulence about 5/10,  transparency was excellent, and  location was Louisville, CO.

Region 10960 has been quite active for the past several days and finally rotated into view yesterday. It has produced multiple M-Class flares see http://raben.com/graphs

Image from around 1pm MDT taken with Baader white light solar filter, Celestron Nexstar 11 telescope, and Canon Xti camera. No wind, temperature around 70°F, turbulence 6/10, excellent transparency, and clear sky.

Region 10956 is about midway between the east limb (left) and center of the disk. It had a series of B-class, and a couple C-class flares earlier today. NOAA has changed the magnetic classification to beta-gamma-delta, the most dangerous type. M-class flares are expected. Also it has grown by 69% in the last 24 hours. See http://www.raben.com/maps/EarthSideSolarRegions.html for a table showing changes.

Image acquired at 11:50 am MDT with SolarScope LTD 50mm halpha telescope, Televue 2.5X Powermate, and Canon Xti (1/500 sec at ISO 100 for disk, 1/400 sec at ISO 800 for prominences). Aligned and stacked with Registax4, composited and enhanced with Photoshop. Sky was mostly clear, thin haze, temperate 70°F, no wind, and 5/10 turbulence, location Louisville, CO.

Image of the sun in white light at 1:00 pm MDT with Stellarvue A1010 telescope, Baader filter, and Canon Xti camera (ISO 100, 1/400 sec exposure). Aligned and stacked with Registax4.