Some Solar Activity

 Complex Sunspot

Sunspot cycle 25 is slowly beginning to increase. A good-sized sunspot group was nicely placed for viewing in the Sun's southern hemisphere on November 7th. Observing conditions were ideal: no clouds, no bugs, no wind, and temperature in the upper 60's. I had not used my solar telescope in 5 months, so my imaging work was a bit rusty and inefficient. Only 6 of the 45 images I captured were useful.

Two images made with a ZWO 1600 monochrome camera and 3X Barlow lens were combined to make the following mosaic showing most of the solar disc.

(Click on the image for a larger view.) Large sunspot 2781 is below center. Another active region, number 2780, appears as a white area above center. A modest prominence rises from the solar rim in the upper right.

Sunspot group 2781 included one major dark umbra and a few smaller umbras shown in good detail in the next image.

The previous image, made with a ZWO 174 monochrome camera and 5X Barlow lens, is a stack of 100 video frames from a 1,000 frame video. Seeing was very good during image capture, so this picture represents nearly the maximum resolution I can achieve with my equipment.

Sunspot numbers should gradually increase through the coming year as you can see in the following graph from the NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center.

I'm looking forward to more imaging in coming years when there are multiple sunspots, filaments, and prominences.