Lots of Spots

Sunspot Variety

Summertime in Williamsburg, VA doesn't favor astronomical observing. Almost every day is cloudy. Rare cloudless observing windows last only a few morning hours before clouds pop up. One such unusual span of clear sky happened on the morning of July 11th. For a brief two hour period there were no clouds, no wind, and good seeing. Temperature was quite warm, but tolerable, ranging from 77 degrees to 81 degrees during my imaging session.

Solar activity is humming along nicely these days. The following 15-panel mosaic shows action on July 11th. Each individual panel is a stack of 100 frames from a 1,000 frame video clip made with a ZWO 174 MM camera, attached to a 3X Barlow lens on a Lunt 100 mm solar telescope.

One major sunspot, 3363, has a large umbra below center. From top to bottom on the right are sunspots 3361, 3367, and 3366. Sunspot 3372, with spiky eruptions, is emerging around the upper left rim. A few prominences are scattered around the limb. (Click on the images to see a larger view.)

The next 2-panel mosaic shows most of the features in the western hemisphere in good detail.

Sunspot 3361 is on top. Double umbra sunspot 3367 is in the middle. Sunspot 3366 is nearing the limb on the lower right accompanied by a nice prominence. Sunspot 3362, with a dim umbra, is in the lower left. Several filaments are scattered about making a nice solar scene.

Moving to a portion of the eastern hemisphere, the following 5-panel mosaic shows big sunspot 3363 and prominences.

On the upper left rim you can see a "filaprom". This is a prominence in the process of rotating around to become a filament when viewed against the background solar disc. While observing I noticed the development of an interesting strand of light spanning the elongated umbras of sunspot 3363. The next two images show the change. At 8:50 EDT (12:50 UT) the umbra looked like this:

Forty five minutes later, at 9:35 EDT (13:35 UT), it looked like this:

I've never seen an umbra eruption feature like this before!

Emerging sunspot 3372, just coming over the eastern limb, presented spiky, churning activity seen in profile.

Activity slowly changed in 25 minutes between 9:28 and 9:53 EDT. The next image, (slightly less sharp), shows the difference.

Inevitable clouds began appearing around 10:40, and I was beginning to feel the summer heat. It was time to shut down and haul my equipment inside to wait for the next rare cloudless sky.
 

Bike Ride Wildlife

Scenes From My Bike

During regular bike rides near dawn I sometimes see unusual wildlife. For example, one morning I rode past this substantial snapping turtle crossing the road.

This fellow, quite a bit larger than my bike helmet, was initially posing nicely with extended head and neck. By the time I dismounted and got my camera ready its grumpy head had withdrawn into the withdrawn position shown in these pictures.

On several mornings, always in the same neighborhood, I pass by this unique deer whose brown and white skin pattern and humped spine are the result of an odd genetic hand dealt to her.

Over the past few years I've noticed swarms of small creatures skittering across the bike path at one location. From my seat on the speeding bike they looked like large beetles, or spiders, but I never stopped to investigate. One recent morning curiosity finally motivated me to dismount and take a closer look. It was quite a surprise to discover hordes of small crabs crossing the trail! The individual I managed to photograph was roughly the size of a quarter and not happy about having his journey interrupted! It presented a face that reminded me of Martian invasion machines in the 2005 War of the Worlds movie.

Fortunately, there were so many crabs I had time to dismount and take a look before they disappeared.

It's usually impossible to remove a phone camera from my biking jersey quickly enough to photograph fleeting glimpses of wildlife. So I've failed to photograph a number of unusual things I've seen over the years. Here are some memorable ones:

• A confrontational standoff between a fox and vulture in a field
• A coyote mother escorting her pup across a road and open field
• Dolphins swimming in the Chickahominy River
• A great blue heron flying low across my path only 2 meters away
• A hawk swooping down to grasp prey less than two meters in front of my bike
• Eagles and ospreys overhead carrying fish in their talons
  
• A group of 8 adult male deer with full antlers feeding on a residential lawn
• Five fully antlered deer (probably from the same group above) bursting from woods and running across the bike path about 10 meters in front of me

Too bad there are no images or video to capture these sightings. At least the enormous snapping turtle above moved slowly enough for me to get a picture!