Huge Sunspot Group

Poor Seeing

Sunspot group 3615 had grown to enormous size a few days before March 24th. I took my Seestar to a nearby field to see if it would properly operate far outside local wifi Internet range. Things worked well, and I captured the following solar image on March 24th.

Giant sunspot group 3615 is slightly right of center. The image above was made by stacking the best 100 frames from a 1,000-frame video. During 90 seconds of video recording strong wind gusts rocked Seestar causing the live display to shake. In spite of this, there were at least 100 decently steady video frames available to produce an acceptable picture.

Visible above are seven sunspots arranged along two diagonal lines. On the upper diagonal line, from right to left, are sunspots 3621 (small), 3614, 3619, and tiny spot 3622. On the lower diagonal line, from right to left, are sunspots 3615, 3617, and tiny spot 3620. (Click on the image to view the smaller sunspots on an enlarged disc.)

Although wind diminished significantly the next day on March 25th, troublesome gusts still buffeted my equipment from time to time. By afternoon temperature had risen into the low 50's and no clouds were present. I hauled out my dedicated hydrogen-alpha solar telescope for the first time since last November. When everything was finally ready for video capture the live laptop screen view was disappointing. Seeing was particularly bad causing the displayed image to waver like crazy. It was hard to focus precisely. Nevertheless, I did manage to get some reasonable pictures by stacking 400 frames from 4,000-frame videos. The next image shows big sunspot 3615 along with companion sunspot 3617 in the upper left.

The diagonal line connecting the two sunspots is tilted up to the left instead of down to the left as it is on the full disc image above. The orange full disc Seestar image shows 3615 in the photosphere. The hydrogen-alpha image immediately above shows 3615 higher up in the chromosphere above the photosphere. Poor seeing made small details fuzzy.

The next two-panel mosaic shows a wider view including sunspots 3614 and 3619 in the upper frame.

A slightly wider view is shown in the next 7-panel mosaic which includes two smaller sunspots near the left edge.

Atmospheric turbulence made prominence imaging impossible. The solar limb looked like a wavy rope when I decided to quit!