Filaments Galore

 Spectacular Solar Scenery

On July 12th only a brief cloudless window opened to allow imaging an active Sun. After 45 minutes setting up my equipment I recorded the first video clip at 10:18 am EDT. Scattered clouds began appearing 51 minutes later at 11:09. Twenty minutes later it was too cloudy to continue! This happens frequently at my observing site. It seems like I'm always rushing to get images before clouds interfere. This day I roasted in 80-to-85-degree temperatures, although an occasional breeze helped.

Future weeks of cloudy weather were forecast, so this was an opportunity I couldn't miss. Lots of solar features made my effort worthwhile as you can see in the first image below. It's a 12-panel mosaic made with a 3X Barlow lens. Each panel is a stack of 400 best quality frames selected from a 4,000-frame video. (Click on the image to see full detail.)

Several spectacular dark filaments are scattered across the disc. They are relatively cooler gases confined by magnetic fields above the hotter chromosphere below. In the image's upper half, from left to right, are sunspots 3057 and 3053. In the image's lower half small sunspot 3056 is at left and major spot 3055 is near center. The next image is an inverted version of the previous image. Here white areas are cooler and dark areas are hotter. Filaments appear like white clouds floating above the surface underneath.

Next is a close view of major sunspot 3055 and accompanying filaments. Evidence of curved magnetic field lines can be seen in the complicated sunspot structure. 

Smaller sunspot 3053 was near an interesting long curved filament.

Only one portion of the solar limb contained prominences of note. Tiny sunspot 3056 is near a white active region. A portion of sunspot group 3055 is visible near the right image edge.

I was exhausted after this rushed and sweaty imaging session, but happy to successfully capture some spectacular solar scenery.