Tremendous Sunspot 2192

Marvelous Sunspot Now Faces Toward Earth

A period of beautiful weather continued on October 21st: ideal conditions with temperature in the upper 60's to low 70's. Showpiece sunspot 2192 was still on display looking better than ever. It's hard to judge the size of this enormous sunspot group without a normal-sized sunspot nearby. You can compare 2192 with just such an ordinary sunspot in the next picture, a 2-image mosaic showing typical sunspot 2194 to the lower left with monster 2192 in the center.

An extremely long filament was also present in the northeastern quadrant of the Sun.

This filament was only partly around the eastern limb four days ago on October 17th.

Since mighty sunspot 2192 was so active, I tried recording another time-lapse movie. Only minutes after recording began at 2:37 pm EDT communication between my computer and the telescope mount was broken. Fortunately, the mount kept tracking. After about 18 minutes a flock of clouds began moving into a previously unblemished sky from the south. I was forced to stop recording for about 3 minutes while a cloud passed over the Sun. There were gaps between clouds, but clouds were thickening. After 35 minutes the situation became impossible. The whole southern sky was covered with clouds. What a shame! The sunspot was just starting to do interesting things when clouds ruined everything. Nevertheless, I used the 28 still frames I was able to capture to construct the following movie showing about 35 minutes of activity from 2:37 pm EDT to 3:12 EDT (from 18:37 to 19:12 UT). Notice blinking white areas and the surge coming below the largest umbra just as the movie ends. Although the movie frames are not all equally spaced because of the cloud interruption, the movie doesn't look jerky. When some thin clouds passed in front of the Sun they caused a brief darkening. Unfortunately, the eruption below the sunspot was just beginning when thick clouds ended the session. This eruption seems to be coming from under the penumbra as though the penumbra was a lifted lid on a boiling pot. (Be patient while the movie loads. If it doesn't play automatically, click on it.)

The cursed clouds ruined a good opportunity to observe more seething action in this magnificent sunspot.