My Sparky Granddaughter!

Sophie Does Many Things!

She swings!

She calculates!

She sings!

She climbs!

She balances!

She charms!

She flies!

She bubbles!

Penumbral Waves!

Late November Sun

My last solar observing day for 2011 was November 25, just 28 days from the winter solstice. The Sun manages a maximum altitude of only about 30 degrees above the horizon at this time of year and is mostly hidden behind trees and rooftops from my observing spot. Even though a small two hour window between trees still exists, the colder weather discourages me. My tolerance for winter observing has been severely diminished by 33 freezing years spent in the unheated Randolph College observatory. I probably won't observe again until March or April.

It was unseasonably warm and pleasant on November 25, so I made the most of my brief view between trees. First, look at this mosaic of sunspots and filaments:

Sunspot 1358(L) and the 1356 group(R) (Click for full detail)

Moving across the Sun to the right of the mosaic above brings sunspot 1355 into view to the right of the 1356 group along with a nice set of filaments:

Sunspot group 1356(L) and sunspot 1355(R) (Click for full detail)

After completing the still images I tried, once again, to make some movies. Seeing conditions were fairly good in spite of occasional wind. Once again I failed to record any extremely dramatic eruptions, but I did manage to capture examples of a phenomenon known as penumbral waves. The first movie below shows 60 minutes of action in sunspot group 1356 from 12:16 PM to 1:16 PM EST. (Be patient until the movie loads and plays properly.) An eruption spewing out a gas plume was already in progress on the far left as recording began. Focus attention on the largest dark sunspot umbra and the lighter grey penumbra surrounding it. You will notice circular ripples heading out from the center like waves from a stone dropped in a pond. These are called penumbral waves.

Penumbra waves were also visible in sunspot 1355 below during the same time period:

Graphs and Laughs

I'm a quantitative guy!

Those who know me laugh and roll their eyes at my habit of measuring, counting, and graphing all sorts of things. For instance:

• In 2003 I ate 29 boxes of corn flakes.
• Over the course of several years I've picked up 20,526 walnuts from my back lawn before finally deciding to remove the annoying walnut trees.
• I once got 69 shaves from one razor blade.
• During my academic career I spent 439 nights, more than a year of nights, at the college observatory measuring variable stars.

I find these trivial facts strangely amusing. Let's see. If I've been eating 29 boxes of corn flakes a year ... in the last 30 years ... I've consumed 870 boxes! Maybe I should order corn flakes by the truckload. Geez! A lot of corn flakes have gone through my system!

I've accumulated a good number of running miles over the years, 43,755 miles to be exact. Now, like an aging machine, my body is beginning to creak, clank, and groan. Here's a record of my yearly running mileage since I started keeping records in 1972. (Incidentally, 43,755 miles is nothing compared to many lifetime runners who have gone three or four times this far!) This year I've managed to run only 581 miles so far. A knee injury is holding me back at the moment.

Note the recent decline and the optimistic continuation to 2020. (click to enlarge)

On the other hand, I've been more durable on my road bike. I've accumulated 36,576 road biking miles since 1987.

Biking mileage hasn't declined in recent years! I'm not dead yet! (click to enlarge)

Compare the graphs for years 1988 and 1989 when I could hardly run at all due to running injuries. I switched to mostly biking and recorded big bike mileage then. This year has been my second best biking mileage year ever at 2,722 miles so far.

Every year I fight a constant battle to maintain an athletic weight of 147 pounds. Every year I lose the battle during the winter months when I can't burn enough calories on my bike. For example, look at my weight last year in 2010:

The year begins with the usual bloat from the preceding 2009 Thanksgiving and Christmas. Weight starts to drop as I recover, but then, classes begin. Almost immediately my schedule and diet become chaotic as stress begins building. It's winter and there's no time to bike. Also, I can no longer run far enough to burn significant calories. So the sad inevitable weight increase proceeds through February and March peaking at over 158 disastrous gut-busting pounds in mid-April. I recover very briefly before the upward slide starts again. At last April ends, classes end, weather warms, my schedule loosens, and I get on the bike. Immediately my weight starts dropping as I get control of my life again. By the end of August I've reached my goal of 147 pounds. Unfortunately, biking gets harder as the days shorten and temperatures drop. I'm still near 147 in early November when I'm rocked by a 48-hour virus. The illness really depletes me. Notice what happens at Thanksgiving! Yikes! Big dinners, no biking, trays of caloric treat bombs sprinkled around the house, and more calories at Christmas lead to immediate weight gain. But I end the year at 149 pounds, roughly 7 pounds better than the previous year's 156 pounds.

How are things going this year? Although no longer teaching classes after retirement, I still gained weight during the winter because calories in exceeded calories out. But good news is recorded in the 2011 graph below.

I reached my goal weight of 147 at the beginning of July in 2011 instead of at the end of August as in 2010. Now, in early December, I've so far managed to avoid the usual holiday weight gain. It's after Thanksgiving and I'm still good! This year I am absolutely determined to stay near 147 until next spring when I get back on the bike again. Then let snacking begin!

Best Mosaic Yet!

November 8, 2011

A multitude of interesting solar features were displayed on November 8th. Several sunspots, filaments, and prominences were visible and there were periods of good seeing during my three hour observing window.

Sunspot 1338 (Click for full detail)

 Some interesting dark filaments near sunspot 1340:

Sunspot 1340 with filaments (Click for full detail)

Nine separate overlapping images were blended together to produce the image below, the best mosaic I've been able to produce so far. You really need to view this image full size to appreciate all the detail present: a huge prominence on the upper left, two spectacular arcing filaments, bright white active areas, and four sunspots! The bottom part of the big prominence on the upper left curves down onto the solar disk where it appears as a broad dim filament. I'm really excited about this image!

L to R: Sunspots 1343, 1341, 1342 and 1339 (Click for full detail)

For 25 minutes from 12:41 PM to 1:06 PM EST the seeing was good enough to record some activity in the upper left region of the mosaic above. After 1:06 seeing drastically deteriorated and further imaging was futile. What a shame! Another 30 minutes or so would have revealed even more curling, undulating gas plumes and waving filaments. Please be patient while the movie loads and begins to play smoothly.

Giant Sunspot

Huge Sunspot Appears

Observing opportunities from my driveway diminish as autumn  proceeds. The Sun disappears behind chimneys and trees on its lower, ever-shortening arc across the sky. Only a few hours were available November 2 to image giant sunspot 1339 emerging around the Sun's rim.

Left:Sunspot 1339; Right: small sunspots 1337 and 1336 (Click for full detail)

Notice the flame-like gas plume erupting toward the rim from an active area within the 1339 complex on the left above. During a brief 25-minute interval from 2:44 PM to 3:09 PM EDT on November 2, 2011 I was able to record some of this eruption in the following movie:

Unfortunately, the movie ended prematurely when the Sun passed behind an annoying tree. I wish the action could have continued longer!

Three days later, on November 5, sunspot 1339 had been carried further toward the center of the Sun's disk. Although seeing conditions were mostly terrible on November 5, I was able to get one presentable image of 1339 showing its complicated structure more clearly than the image above.

Sunspot 1339 on November 5 (Click for full detail)

Three days later, on November 8, the seeing was better and sunspot 1339 now looked like this:

Sunspot 1339 on November 8 (Click for full detail)

 Notice the changes in 1339 over the three day interval from November 5 to November 8. The elongated sunspot on the far left seems to be fading out while the largest sunspot on the right has condensed a bit and is no longer split in two. More images from November 8 will appear in next week's post.

Nice Filament

Best Filament Image So Far

Filaments are somewhat like clouds above the solar chromosphere. They are cooler than their immediate surroundings and cooler than some of the chromosphere below. This relative coolness makes them appear dark against the background solar disk. Filaments are temporarily held in place by magnetic fields. The first image below is the best image I've yet captured of a filament, in this case a hook-shaped one beneath a patchwork pattern of bright activity:

Hook-shaped filament imaged on October 25, 2011 (Click for full detail)

When a filament is seen on the rim of the Sun it is called a prominence. The image above shows the "top view" of a prominence. The following image shows the "side view" of a (different) prominence with sunspot 1327 also visible.

Sunspot 1327 with prominences on the right (Click for full detail)

The original goal on October 25th was to use a Mylar-filtered Celestron-8 telescope mounted for the first time on my Ioptron Mini Tower Pro. I hoped to image the same sunspot in both the photosphere (visible surface of the Sun) and the chromosphere (layer just above the photosphere). I was curious to see if the Celestron-8 would capture any granulation (evidence of rising and falling gases) in the solar photosphere. Unfortunately, the seeing was not good enough to reveal detailed granulation. Intermittent breezes buffeted the telescope and images wavered and danced in the video display. Below are the best results for my photosphere/chromosphere comparison for sunspot 1330. First, the Celestron-8 prime focus photosphere image:

Sunspot 1330 with photospheric granulation barely visible (Click for full detail)

Here is an image of the same sunspot 1330 taken with the Lunt 100mm H-alpha telescope showing sunspot 1330 in the chromosphere:

Sunspot 1330 in the chromosphere (Click for full detail)

Here's a blinking comparison between the Sun's photosphere (purple) and chromosphere (red):

Purple to red moves outward away from the Sun's center.

Multiple Sunspot Movies

Four Sunspots In Action

The movies below were recorded on October 16th. They show 64 minutes of activity between 10:00 AM and 11:04 AM EDT in the four sunspots shown in this (colorized) still image.

Diagonally bottom to top: Sunspots 1314, 1319, 1316, 1317.

The movie of the entire scene above was too large to upload. Instead, I've broken it up into two smaller pieces. Both movies take a few minutes to load properly, so please be patient. In the upper right portion of the first movie a gas plume eruption is already in progress near sunspot 1317 at the movie's start, so the eruption seems to start instantaneously:

 The remaining two sunspots featured bright flare-ups as seen below:

Sunspot 1319 at top right has an eruption recorded here just about 20 minutes before the recording shown in my previous post. Bright eruptions also occur in sunspot 1314 at lower left, including one outburst from the edge of the dark umbra. The other flame-like explosion from 1314 seems to push gases along a c-shaped arc in the lower left corner.