Large sunspots
- Details
Yesterday when I visited the website of aac Eta Carinae, I immediately noticed the visibility of 2 large sunspots in the SOHO-image on this website. Yesterday I didn't find the time to carry the telescope outside, but today at the end of the afternoon I was able to do that. The ETX-125 with solar filter pointed at the sun showed a very nice group of large sunspots. After quickly connecting the Nikon D90 to the telescope I was able to take some shots. The best image has been processed in Adobe Photoshop and is shown below.
The exposure of this picture is 1/250 seconds and the sensitiviy was ISO 200.
Conjunction of the Moon and the Pleiades
- Details
On March 20, 2010 in the early hours of the evening there was a conjunction of the Moon and the Pleiades. This conjunction was very close and some of the brighter stars of the Pleiades were covered by the Moon.
This image is a combination of 5 pictures made on March 20 at 9:47 PM with a Nikon D90 with the zoomlens at 105mm, opening F/6.3 and exposure of 1.6 seconds. The images are processed and stacked in Imageplus 3.75.
Sunspots - February 12, 2010
- Details
At the end of this afternoon the sunspot group 1046 (left of center in this picture) was still about the same size as in my previous observation. There is a lot of activity but that is not shown with the type of filter that I am using. On the website solarlive.nu an animation can be found of a solar flare that has been seen this morning in this group.
The first group (1045) is to the right in the picture and almost disappears over the edge. In this area there are a lot of bright (hotter) spots. Comparable hot spotes can also been seen at the left side in the picture; so it is probable that this is the first sight of a new group.
Sunspots - continuation
- Details
Chis has also looked at the sun with his telescope and he mentions:
"I have looked on Wednesday afternoon; I have seen 7 sunspots at about 30 degrees South and 7 sunspots at 30 degrees Northern longitude. Lattitude for both groups is about the same. Certainly worth a look. It is several years ago that I have seen such a large group. Apparently the minimum in solar activity in the 11 year cycle is passed".
More sunspots
- Details
A short update. This afternoon (February 10) I have once again pointed my ETX-125 with solar filter to the sun to check if something has changed since a few days ago. And that was clearly the case. Now there are two groups of sunspots. Both groups were already visible in the picture of last Monday, but the smallest group consisted at that time of 1 small and 1 larger sunspot surrounded by brighter (hotter) spots.