Sun Wakes Up

Finally! Some Features!

Back in October it seemed like a long time since the Sun displayed significant features. More than a month had passed since my last solar observing session in September. When some cool clear weather finally arrived on October 20th, I was ready to image a variety of sunspots and filaments spread over the eastern half of the Sun.

The following 8-image mosaic, made with a 1.5X Barlow lens, shows features on the Sun's east side. Large sunspot 1877 is in the lower left, and smaller sunspot 1872 is on the lower right near the image edge. Sunspot 1875 is a pair below the two nearly parallel dark filaments. Sunspot 1873 is the white area near the center accompanied by a c-shaped structure. Click on the image for a larger view.

The biggest sunspot, 1877, with interesting activity to its left, is shown in more detail below.

The other sunspots, 1875 and 1873, are shown in the next image. 1875 has a double structure below center. 1873 is smaller and dispersed to the upper right accompanied by a c-shaped structure. I experimented with a new pale blue color in this image.

Filaments near sunspots 1875 and 1873 show nice "float" in the following inverted image.

Finally, I imaged two prominences. First, two dim, spike-like prominences are displayed below.

Another brighter prominence was also present.