Good Seeing!

Many Sunspots!

Meteorologists predicted clouds, but, instead, the morning dawned clear and still on August 2. My decision to observe was rewarded by surprisingly good seeing! The first video image was very steady, about the steadiest I've ever seen, and the Sun was covered with interesting sunspots and filaments. By the time heat made observing unbearable I had captured 59 videos. Almost every one of these yielded a high quality image. Behold the solar show of August 2! Begin with this 3-image mosaic of sunspots 1535, 1538, and a long curving filament.

Sunspot 1535 at top, 1538 at bottom (Click for full detail.)

Filaments are somewhat like clouds suspended above the solar chromosphere. When the image of a dark filament is inverted, the dark filament appears cloudy white and seems to float above the surface. The image below is a good example of the effect.

Beautiful floating filament!

Nice, steady seeing conditions are evident in this detailed 3-image mosaic of sunspots 1532, 1530, and 1529.

L to R: Sunspots 1532, 1530, 1529 (Click for full detail.)

Once again, an inverted image highlights the floating filaments:

(Click for full detail.)

I've been trying to construct multi-image mosaics to capture highly detailed pictures of large areas of the Sun. This 5-image mosaic spans the solar disk.

(Click for full detail.)

Finally, the following imperfect 10-image mosaic attempts to capture the placement of all significant features on the solar disk.

(Click for full detail.)

The 10-image mosaic above is actually 3753 pixels by 2782 pixels. Unfortunately, the blog format does not allow this enormous full sized display.