A Little Solar Action

Two Sunspots

The Sun continues to slowly progress through its sunspot cycle minimum. After weeks of clouds, heat, humidity, and rain, a cold front finally blew through to clear skies and give a few days of wonderfully cooler temperatures and lower humidity. It was 74 degrees on August 24th when I set up my solar telescope to image two small sunspots.

The first image below is a 21-panel mosaic showing two modest sunspots to the right of center. Most of the solar disc is otherwise blank except for a wispy filament at the top left of the image. Two minor prominences are also visible. (Click on the image for a larger view.) 

Imagine the Sun without the two sunspots seen below. That's how blank the solar disc has been lately. This mosaic didn't work well. For some reason software would not align all the panels properly, so I had to crop out the misaligned pieces. Seeing was variable while recording the 21 segments, so there are blurry patches within the whole. 

The next image is a detailed close view of the two sunspots taken during a few moments of good seeing. At the top of the image sunspot 2720 shows a nice dipole structure. At the bottom of the image sunspot 2719 has disrupted surface features. Closely paired sunspots often have north/south magnetic polarity. Sunspot 2720 has its north and south poles aligned opposite to the polarity of sunspots we've been seeing up to this point as solar minimum approaches. This could signal the ending of the minimum phase. Maybe sunspot activity will very slowly increase over the next year.

Once all my equipment was operational I had only 50 minutes of clear sky before lots of fair weather clouds began to parade across the sky blocking the Sun again and again. The beautiful observing conditions were nice while they lasted.