Giant Sunspot

Huge Sunspot Appears

Observing opportunities from my driveway diminish as autumn  proceeds. The Sun disappears behind chimneys and trees on its lower, ever-shortening arc across the sky. Only a few hours were available November 2 to image giant sunspot 1339 emerging around the Sun's rim.

Left:Sunspot 1339; Right: small sunspots 1337 and 1336 (Click for full detail)

Notice the flame-like gas plume erupting toward the rim from an active area within the 1339 complex on the left above. During a brief 25-minute interval from 2:44 PM to 3:09 PM EDT on November 2, 2011 I was able to record some of this eruption in the following movie:

Unfortunately, the movie ended prematurely when the Sun passed behind an annoying tree. I wish the action could have continued longer!

Three days later, on November 5, sunspot 1339 had been carried further toward the center of the Sun's disk. Although seeing conditions were mostly terrible on November 5, I was able to get one presentable image of 1339 showing its complicated structure more clearly than the image above.

Sunspot 1339 on November 5 (Click for full detail)

Three days later, on November 8, the seeing was better and sunspot 1339 now looked like this:

Sunspot 1339 on November 8 (Click for full detail)

 Notice the changes in 1339 over the three day interval from November 5 to November 8. The elongated sunspot on the far left seems to be fading out while the largest sunspot on the right has condensed a bit and is no longer split in two. More images from November 8 will appear in next week's post.