Wow…just like that, there’s a sprinkling of active sunspots on the Sun today!

The Sun looked very spotty with many active sunspots across its surface and some small prominences around the limb, The Active Regions are 2863, 2864, 2866 and 2868. The Sun is really starting to get quite active now with sunspots sprouting up nearly every day now.
 
The white light image was taken with a Canon 70D camera & Canon 100-400mm lens with 2x teleconverter = 1280mm focal length with solar filter attached…. The exposure was 1/500th second and ISO200, 20 images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PSCS4.
 
The H Alpha Image was taken with a Lunt 60mm H-alpha telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 3x Barlow lens. Two sets of images were taken, one for the disc and another for the faint prominences and combined in PS.
​

The sunspot is now looking very small in the 127mm refractor telescope as it rotates towards the western limb of the Sun on the 11th June 2020. During this afternoon observing session I was racing against time as cloud was coming all across the western sky.
 
After taking some images with the refractor I quickly removed it off the Pro HEQ5 mount and replaced it with the Lunt 60mm solar telescope to try and capture some images in Ha. (I always use this tracking mount when using both these telescopes)
 
It was really lucky to get a break in the cloud to capture just two AVI movie movies of the area with the Ha telescope before the whole sky clouded over and that was that…no more observing!
 
The white light image was taken with a 127mm refractor telescope that was fitted with a glass solar filter and using a Canon 700D camera.

​Just one image was captured with an exposure time of 1/320h second and ISO400.  The Ha image was taken with the Lunt solar telescope and a ZWO ASI120MC-S camera attached capturing an AVI movie file and stacking in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4.

Late yesterday afternoon at 4pm (AEST) I got the biggest thrill when I put my little 60mm Lunt solar telescope onto my mount and pointed it at the Sun and saw AR2740 going off like a rocket!!! These four images were taken over just 10 minutes in duration and it was very exciting to watch and capture.
 
If you look closely at the active region (middle of image) you’ll see the solar material being blasted away and travelling across the surface of the Sun as a dark mass of plasma…a small CME in motion!
 
I was very lucky to capture this event as the Sun was getting very low and I’d just packed away my refractor telescope, I just thought I would take a peek at the Sun in H-alpha to see if it was doing anything exciting…and Wow, it was!
 
Images taken with a Lunt 60mm solar scope and a ZWO ASI 120MC-S camera at prime focus, I captured AVI movie files and stacked them in RegiStax6 and processed in PS CS4…there was also a small prominence on the eastern limb so maybe there is another sunspot coming….
 
Note from Noeleen:
If you watch the slideshow you will see the path of the solar material being blasted away from the Sun
​over just a few minutes...Wow!

The next day an image of this solar flare from the Solar Dynamics Observatory was posted on Spaceweather.com 
http://www.spaceweather.com
https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov​

The Sun has been so quite visually for a long now, so when a sunspot emerges everyone is excited, unfortunately its been cloudy here so this is the first time I’ve been able to get the solar scope out to take some pictures, to add to this, we have a bit of smoke in the sky from some burning off, so the sky’s a bit hazy…
 
I was hoping to catch a solar prominence from AR2713 as it hit the western limb of the Sun, but that did not happen and the larger sunspot group AR2715 seems to be getting smaller. While taking this image AR2715 brightened slightly and if you look closely at the shape of the sunspot you can see a pretty heart shape…that heart shape sunspot is larger than our planet Earth!
 
Image taken a with a H-alpha Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a ZWO ASI 120MC-S CCD camera at prime focus, AVI file stacked in RegisStax6 and processed in PS CS4 :-)

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 :-)