Knowing the Sun just sucked in Comet ISON, chewed it into a Thanksgiving gravy of dirty ice melt clods and spat it out into a field of dust offered a little more respectable view of the El Sol than usual. And the Sun did deliver. Click images to enlarge:
ISON gravitationally sucked in and spat out into 100’s of thousands of miles of dust.
Sunspots Dec 2d 2013 – note spot at left edge
The Sunspot count was 104 (NOAA) in a smashing array with a large lone one at the edge exhibiting the Wilson Effect (the spot appears as a slight depression or cavity). The seeing was particularly fair this session and my personal 80mm Refractor with a Hershel Wedge and Continuum Filter showed the solar granularity beautifully as well as plage and faculae. Solar Prominences or H-Alpha Flares were particularly nice with a not-to-often seen Helix Prominence.
We had a small but dedicated crowd for this solar party – impressive because of the “Black Friday”-Thanksgiving-Football-Weekend. Susan and Bill O’Neil showed up with their C5 scope. New member Paul Summers showed up and took some images, along with member Dwight Shackelford, and Santa Cruz Astronomy Club President Jeff Gose. And of course we had members of the public deliberately stop by – or stroll up on their visit to Houge Park. Finally Solar veteran Terry Kahl stopped by for the fix it day. She reported a huge 1x power sunspot and huge prom just a few days ago. A perfect example of why El Sol is so dynamically hot to check out everyday now.
Bill and Susan Showing the Sun with a Standard Filter on a C5
Paul Summers Showing Sun in H-Alpha
Paul had a knack for showing sun to children
Clear Mag -27.64 Skies!
Astronomical observer for 20 years and optical engineer. I design non-imaging prism and reflector optics for commercial, medical and high-end retail lighting.
Is this that sunspot that was just showing on the edge of the rim, that you pointed out to me on Sunday?
http://www.space.com/23848-new-sunspot-spits-geysers-of-fire-video.html
Not sure. The sunspot we saw at edge was Active Region AR1912 and was positioned here Dec 5th: http://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=05&month=12&year=2013