Unusual Weather

Unexpected Good Conditions

Typical mid-August observing conditions in southeastern Virginia include cloudy sky, high humidity, and broiling temperatures. So it was a wonderful surprise on August 19th to use my solar telescope in low humidity and temperature ranging from 68 to 75 degrees! In addition, cloudless sky stretched from horizon to horizon. As you can see in the following satellite image, the entire state of Virginia was cloud free at 10:00 EDT! Even haze-producing Canadian wildfire smoke descending into the midwest stayed away from Virginia.

Even though solar features were not especially dramatic this day, it was hard to skip an observing opportunity with conditions so nice. The next image is a slightly imperfect mosaic constructed from 36 individual panels: 20 for the disc, and 16 for prominences. It shows a good number of prominences around the limb, several dark filaments, and five sunspots. (Click on images to enlarge.)

Sunspot 3403 is the dark umbra in upper right. Sunspot 3407 has a double umbra in the lower right. Just left of center is sunspot 3405 with smaller spot 3411 to its left. Small spot 3412 is near the left limb. None of these spots were flaring or presenting complex structure. I thought limb prominences were the best features this day. Next is a colored prominence mosaic with the disc blacked out.

Four of the major sunspots are shown in the next close view which shows good detail when enlarged.

Sunspot 3403 was accompanied by an interesting filament stretching to the right toward the limb where it begins to form a "filaprom".

Next is a closer view of three sunspots in the left solar hemisphere.

Finally, here's a close view of filaments on the lower solar disc along with double umbra spot 3407.

Clear skies continued into the evening. The Milky Way was visible to the south, so I decided to try some pictures in spite of neighbors' light pollution. Maybe some of these images will be good enough to post in my next blog.