I set up my solar gear late this afternoon just to see if there was anything happening on the solar surface in the hydrogen-alpha wavelength and to my surprise there on the solar limb was a faint prominence detaching away from the Sun.
 
It was exciting to see some activity after such a long time of inactivity  :-)
 
I also took an image with just my camera and long focal length lens to capture the Sun in the visible light.
 
The H-alpha image above was taken with a Lunt LS60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached, I took two sets of images one for the solar disc and one set for the faint prominence and combined both images in PS.
​You have to do this because the faint prominence needs a longer exposure than the solar disc.
 
The ordinary image of the Sun below was taken with a Canon 70D camera and an 18-400mm Tamron lens with a 2x converter set at 400mm making a focal length of 1280mm. A glass solar filter was also attached to the front of the lens for safe viewing and imaging of the Sun.

I just had to try and get an image of this huge circular filament on the surface of the Sun on the 25th November, we are still on our caravan trip in NSW so I set up my static tripod and put the Lunt 60mm solar scope on and tried to capture some images…it was very very hot!!!
 
I’m very happy to say that I managed to obtain a few images to stack, Spaceweather has supplied the information from the
Solar Dynamic Observatory stating that this huge feature is 280,000 km long…Wow!
 
All this activity is causing stunning auroras over the northern polar areas of Earth, please go to the Spaceweather.com to view some of the amazing images :-)
 
Image taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera fitted with a 2x barlow lens, 12 images stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS.

Images taken at Port Stephens NSW Australia

What a stunning surprise to see this magnificent looped prominence on the western limb on the Sun today from huge sunspot group AR2673.
 
I watched and photographed it for hours while it pulsated into delicate large arcs, at one stage, I though it was going to detach but then the two sides of plasma meet again and formed another beautiful arc,
​what an incredible display to witness!
 
 This image is taken with a ZWO ASI 120 MC-S CCD camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached to a Lunt 80mm solar telescope.
 
The AVI movie file was imported into Registak6 for stacking, there was next to no processing, basically, this is the way it come down from the Sun, it was just awesome!!!

​The full solar disc image above was taken with Lunt 80mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached to show how large this prominence was on the Sun. This is a composite image, one set of images for the prominence and the other set for the solar disc. Both images were combined in PS CS4.
 
The other image is from NASA’s Solar Dynamic Observatory, which shows this amazing activity in extreme ultra violet light. Please go to there website to see more incredible images of our star, the Sun at:
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov
​

It was so exciting observing the Sun today, while taking images with the Lunt H-Alpha solar telescope,
active sunspot AR2665 started to light up and go crazy with activity!!!
 
There were also two very active prominences firing away on the eastern limb which were quite spectacular…

Images taken with a 80mm Lunt solar telescope and a ZWO ASI120MC-S with 2x Barlow lens attached, AVI video files imported into RegiStax6 for stacking and processed in PS CS4.
This is a composite image, one for the solar disc and one for the fainter prominences that were combined in PS.
 
NASA's  Solar Dynamic Observatory recorded the solar flare and the NOAA  (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) space weather map showed that I was right in the middle of this outburst in Australia.

The Sun put on quite a show today  (25th June 2017) at our exciting Star Stuff cosmic event being held this weekend at Bryon Bay.  Yay!!!…Thank you Sun :-)
 
Our astronomy club the Southern Astronomical Society, had a Lunt 80mm solar telescope and a few Coronado 40mm PST scopes on display for everyone to safely view the surface of the Sun in H-alpha, where a lovely solar prominence was firing away on the NW limb. The other small sunspot on the surface is AR2664.

I managed to get some time to set up my camera and show people how to take images of the Sun with the DSLR camera attached to the Lunt solar telescope.

​The solar image above is a composite, one set of images for the disc and one set of images for the faint prominence, because you need a longer exposure to capture the faint gases of prominences.
 
Images taken with a Canon 700D and a 3x Barlow lens, the disc image was ISO200 and 1/160th second, the longer exposures images was for 1/20th second and ISO 400. Both images were combined in PS CS4.

The Sun has been ever so quite over the past six months, but today the solar surface showed two small Sunspots AR2262 & AR2263, a couple of large filaments and also two prominences on each side of the solar limb.
 
The image was taken with a 80mm Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached.
 
Exposures were 1/200th second and ISO400, 15 images were stacked in Registak6 and processed in PS CS4. This time I played around with the Hue/Saturation in Photoshop to obtain the more natural golden colour of the Sun instead of the usual red colour as seen through the H-alpha telescope :-)

The clouds parted just long enough later this afternoon for me to take some images of the new sunspot group AR2629. The other sunspot area AR2628 has a shape that looks quite interesting…it reminds me of a little tadpole with that wispy tail coming away from its dark centre :-)
 
The first image is orientated with the western side of the Sun to the bottom which shows AR2628 and the eastern side to the top right which shows AR2629; the second full disc image is in the correct orientation.
 
Both images were taken with my APO 127mm refractor telescope with a glass solar filter attached and using a Canon 700D camera, the first image had a 2x Barlow attached and the second image showing the full solar disc was at prime focus. 

~ The Sun in H-alpha shows a huge solar prominence on the limb ~
 
When you look in a dedicated solar telescope at the Sun in the H-alpha wavelength you can sometimes see so much more incredible detail.
 
This is what happened when I decide to take off the white light refractor and have a look at the Sun with my solar telescope…to my surprise and delight there on the eastern limb was a large wedge shape prominence firing away out into space, not that far away from the new sunspot group AR2629.

I’ve sometimes noticed that when a large prominence is displayed like this on the eastern limb, that within a day or two a new sunspot group rotates into view.
​I wonder if this will happen again and we’ll have another new sunspot soon…
 
Images were taken with a Lunt 80mm solar telescope and a Canon 700d camera with a 2x Barlow lens; this is a composite image to capture the different exposures needed for the solar disc and the faint prominences. Exposures were 1/200th second and ISO200 for the solar disc and 1/15th second and ISO 200 for the prominences.

I was very excited to see a beautiful spouting prominence on the eastern edge of the Sun this morning (top left of image) that looked quite spectacular, there was also some of that giant cloud of plasma still ejecting out into space from the western limb.
 
It was very hard to capture and process the faint detail of the prominence on the western limb so I’ve coloured the outer edge to show the very faint wispy detail. (Click on image to enlarge for more detail)

Spaceweather.com website had an image of the event taken with NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory on its front page on its site on the 23rdJanuary 2017.
​ http://www.spaceweather.com
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov

The view through the 127mm refractor was also a lovely sight; with the large sunspot AR2628 quite dark on the solar surface AR 2627 which is still quite faint…

The H-alpha images were taken with my Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens, exposures for solar disc were 1/200th second and ISO200. The settings for the prominences were exposures 1/15th second and ISO400, the images were combined and processed in PS CS4.

Today is the last day of 2016 and the Sun’s surface is absolutely spotless, but there is some activity on the solar limb with two lovely prominences on show.
 
Happy New Year everyone :-)
 
White light image taken with a Canon 70D camera and a 100-400mm lens with a 2x converter fitted with a glass solar filter, exposure 1/500th second and ISO320.
 
H-Alpha image is a composite image to capture the solar disc and the faint prominences. Taken with a 60mm Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 70D fitted with a 2x Barlow lens, exposure for disc 1/200th second and ISO400, prominences exposure 1/30th second and ISO500.

Over the last few months I’ve observed that the current sunspot level on the surface of the Sun has rapidly diminished and we've had many days with a spotless Sun.
 
At first, it was quite exciting to see the blank surface after so many years of spotted active regions marking the solar disc, but now it’s so quite and bland in the white light spectrum.  But the Sun is still very interesting in Hydrogen Alpha spectrum using my Lunt solar telescope, and these huge coronal holes that keep opening up on the Suns surface are just fascinating!
 
To see some lovely sunspots during 2016 please go to a couple of my blogs at:
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/sunspot-ar2529its-a-beauty
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-there-back-sunspots-on-the-surface-of-the-sun
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-spotless-sun-2nd-july-2016
 
There were many more amazing sunspot regions in 2015; if you go back through my blogs you’ll see some wonderful images, just type in Sun in the search box on my site.
 
Sunspot activity has a definite pattern that lasts for approximately about 11 years in duration, the Sun is now heading toward what is called solar minimum…to read more about this phenomena please download the file below or go to Dr Tony Phillips article ‘Sunspot Cycle at Lowest Level in 5 Years’ that explains all about it at:
http://news.spaceweather.com/sunspot-cycle-at-lowest-level-in-5-years/
http://news.spaceweather.com/author/swxnews/

Data from the SPACE WEATHER PREDICTION CENTER
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov
​

If there’s something exciting happening in the night sky and also on the surface of the Sun, many astrophotographers worldwide, including myself post there images here at http://www.spaceweather.com so please check in every now and then as you’ll be amazed at what you’ll see.
​Noeleen :-)