Sunspot Parade

Brief Observing Window

Skies cleared unexpectedly on November 24th, so I rushed outside to set up my solar telescope. There was a slight breeze on this cool morning where temperature ranged from 44 to 48 degrees. I used a ZWO 174 monochrome camera and 3X Barlow together with a powered USB hub to connect the camera to my laptop.

The following 4-image mosaic shows three major southern hemisphere sunspots that motivated my observing effort. (Click on the image for a  full-sized view.)

As the Sun rotates features move from left to right (east to west). On the right is sunspot 2783. Since my last observing session on November 21st, spot 2783 moved across the disc from left of center to right of center. A new pair of sunspots also rotated into view on the left. Smaller spot 2785 preceded larger spot 2786.

The following image of sunspots 2786 and 2785 is nearly 3-dimensional, especially when viewed in the enlarged version obtained by clicking on the image. In particular, look at the region just to the lower left of large spot 2786. The solar surface looks like waves in a shag carpet. There's a white energetic eruption emerging from the bottom of the umbra and another white eruptive plume popping up near the rim on the spot's left. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to move the field of view lower to fully capture the prominence on the lower edge of the image.

Sunspot 2783 was still accompanied by a modest white active area to its left.

After capturing the prominent sunspots I looked at the sky to check if it remained cloud free. Bad luck! Thin, hazy clouds and several contrails were increasing. I had to stop capturing images only 13 minutes after starting!