Sunspot Cluster

Beautiful Group

The Sun changes daily. Recently, just by chance, a bunch of sunspots formed close together. I made a quick decision on the afternoon of May 11th to try capturing the sunspot cluster which was nicely located near center on the solar disc. Seeing was surprisingly good despite afternoon heat. Only 48 minutes of clear sky prevailed until increasing fair weather clouds eventually ended the session. The steady atmosphere allowed good detail in the images I did record.

The first picture below, a 2-image mosaic made with a 2X Barlow lens, shows the closely packed swarm of sunspots. Between 5 and 7 dark umbras are all within the field of view! Imagine the complicated magnetic field lines emerging from and descending into umbras, arching from one spot to another!

The next picture is a 7-image mosaic showing the tight grouping within a wider field. An additional small sunspot pair and some filaments are located beneath the major group.

Finally, the eastern portion of the Sun contained a complex sunspot region seen near center in the following picture cropped from a 17-image mosaic. (Click on the image for a larger view.)

It's too bad all the previous images couldn't be joined together in one inclusive mosaic. Unfortunately, I blundered by making image overlap too small in certain key regions. None of my merging programs would stitch the images together, so the three separate images displayed here are the best I could do.