What a surprise I got when I looked at the Sun late this afternoon and saw this huge prominence putting on an incredible show on the south-western limb of the Sun…what an enormous prominence it was with so much power…. Our star is truly awesome!
 
It’s been reported on Spaceweather.com that it’s a giant wall of scorching hot plasma that’s more than five times taller than our entire planet Earth!
 
Images were taken with a Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached. To sets of images were captured one for the disc and one set for the prominences, stacked in RegiStax6 and combined in PS.
 
Second image is a close up view that’s an overexposed image to capture the gaseous prominence. Image taken with Lunt 60mm solar telescope and Canon 700D camera, with 5x Powermate lens attached.

Wow! Huge Prominence
 
A live movie of this beautiful prominence on the western limb of the Sun, taken with the Canon 700D in Movie mode for 1 minute and forty seconds using a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and 5x Powermate lens attached to the camera.

~ Our Sun Today on the 13th July 2022 ~
 
The Sun was very active late this afternoon, especially around those two large sunspot groups AR 3053 & AR 3055. There are also some very interesting looking filaments on the solar surface with that huge filament nearing the solar limb that may produce some stunning prominences in the coming days!
 
Images taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera, two sets of images were captures one for the disc and one for the faint prominences and combined in PS.

Today you can see a very large delicate prominence on the western limb of the Sun; it’s from a huge filament that’s been on the solar surface for the last couple of day and its now reached the edge of the limb.
 
It’s interesting to see these solar events as it shows what’s really happening when those dark filaments rotate to the edge the sun, plasma is continually being ejected from our Star, either passively or explosively as shown here!
 
When I take solar images with the Canon DSLR camera on the Monochrome setting, I’m able to capture much more delicate detail in the prominences, another thing with this setting I only have to take one image to show both the disc and prominences. Usual I have to do two sets of images at different exposures and then combined them, with this method I can get more detail on the solar surface but lose detail on the prominences. (So I’m doing it both ways now)

​I’ve also coloured the monochrome image (below) using the colourize feature in the Hue/Saturation menu in Photoshop and I think it come out quite lovely :-)

Images were taken with a Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached. To sets of images were captured one for the disc and one set for the prominences, stacked in RegiStax6 and combined in PS.

​The monochrome image is one set of 20 images stacked in RegiStax6 and processed in PS, exposure time was 1/40th second and ISO800.

The huge solar filament that I’ve been observing for the past week has now reached the north western limb of the Sun and will probably display some very active prominences over the next few days.
 
There is a very large active Sunspot group called AR 3038 that has doubled in size over the last 24 hours which is very unstable with a ‘beta-gamma’ magnetic field.
 
Some solar photographers that submit to Spaceweather.com have even been able to capture those elusive Ellerman bombs interactions inside this sunspot area, please see an excellent image taken by Richard N Schrantz from Nicholasvilla in the USA.
https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=185864
 
I’ve also captured some of that activity but am limited by the small 60mm aperture of my solar telescope to see the delicate detail.
 
To read more about Ellerman bombs, please go to an article called:
Multiwavelength spectropolarimetric observations of an Ellerman bomb By: R Rezaei and C Beck at: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2015A%26A...582A.104R/abstract
 
I also picked up a small solar flare from new sunspot AR 3040 on the eastern side of the Sun along with some active prominences firing away.
 
My images were captured on the 22nd June and is a composite photo of two sets of images taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope with a Canon 700D camera attached tracked on a HEQ Pro mount.
 
One set of 20 images was taken of the disc with an exposure of 1/320th second and ISO200, and one set of 20 images taken for the faint prominences with and exposure of 1/15th second and ISO200. The images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed and combined in PS CS4.

It was a bit of a challenge getting photos of the Sun today as there was a lot of cloud in the sky, but I did it…that long Filament was just huge and those prominences on the limb looked spectacular.
 
Information on Spaceweather.com states its over 370,000 km long…Wow! The monochrome image is just 20 single images stacked in RegiStax6; it shows the delicate prominences in much more detail than the colour images…
 
My photos were taken with a Lunt 60mm solar telescope and a Canon 700D with a 2x Barlow lens attached. Two sets of images were captured at different exposures and stacked in RegiStax6 and combined in PS. I used the monochrome setting in the camera for the black and white image.

What a difference to see the Sun in a different wavelength of light. I know a lot of people cannot afford a dedicated (Ha) solar telescope but it’s just mind-blowing how much more activity and surface detail you can see with one of these specialised telescope.  I could not afford a new one, so I took the risk and brought a second hand one and I’ve not been happier :-D
 
Yesterday I posted a white light image and all you can see are just the Sunspots on the surface of the Sun with no activity.
 
My Lunt solar telescope is only 60mm in aperture, but the solar view is truly awesome...the Sun is one of those astronomical objects that can change in real time while your observing it, and that’s extremely exciting to see.
 
The (Ha) images were two sets of 20 images each, one set for the solar disc at 1/320th second exposures and ISO200 & the other set for the faint prominences at 1/15th second and ISO200.
 
All the images were stacked in RegiStax6 and processed and combined in PS. The monochrome image is not combined just 25 images stacked with exposure of 1/30th second and ISO800, you can see a lot more detail in the prominences with this image as it’s not a composite photo.

​We had our first full day of sunshine after many weeks of rain to take a lovely picture of the Sun with my Lunt solar telescope.
 
There were some lovely prominences firing away on the western limb with one of them arcing out into space and curving back toward the limb. You can see the sunspots AR3023, 3024, 3026 & 3027 all nearing the western of the solar surface.
 
The images were taken with a Lunt 60mm PT solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached.
 
(Two sets of 20 images were taken with two different exposures to capture the solar disc and the faint prominences and then those two images were combined in PS)

​I was very surprised to capture so much detail on the solar surface because of all the cloud in the sky today.
 
There was a lot of activity around the biggest sunspot groups AR 2993 and AR 2994 and that prominence on the lower western limb was really firing away…but alas, the cloud then completely covered the whole sky and that was the end of that!
 
My images were taken with a Lunt 60mm PT solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached :-D

I’m now starting to also capture images in the monochrome settings within the camera, as I find with this setting there is more delicate detail in the prominences. I’m not very good yet at artificially colouring the Sun in Photoshop, so I’ll stick to my colour images for the time being.

It was a challenge taking this image of the Sun late yesterday afternoon, as there was a lot of cloud in the sky.
 
I wanted to see if there was any activity around that active sunspot area AR 2983 as it neared the western limb and was rewarded with a very active prominence. There was also an active prominence firing away on the northern eastern limb that may be a potentially new active area about to come into view.
 
The two large filaments on the surface of the Sun look like they’re about to join together making an extremely long filament. Safe Solar Observing is getting very interesting now J
 
 Image taken with a Lunt 60mm PT solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens attached. Two sets of images were taken one for the solar disc and one for the prominences and combined in PS.

The Sun today had some beautiful long filaments and an active region around sunspot AR 2978. There were also some interesting prominences around the limb, one of them looked like it was spraying plasma violently out into space (north eastern limb) with another one to the south eastern limb faintly erupting on the limb.
 
Images were taken on the 6th April 2022 with a Lunt 60mm PT solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 2x Barlow lens. Two sets of images were taken one for the disc and one for the prominences, as they needed a longer exposure to capture the faint detail.
Then both images were combined in PS CS4.

Information on Spaceweather.com on Solar Cycle 25 that the Sun has now entered into:
https://www.spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=06&month=04&year=2022
 
SOLAR CYCLE UPDATE: New sunspot counts from NOAA confirm that Solar Cycle 25 is racing ahead of the official forecast--and the gap is growing:

The "official forecast" comes from the Solar Cycle Prediction Panel, a group of scientists representing NOAA, NASA and International Space Environmental Services (ISES). The Panel predicted that Solar Cycle 25 would peak in July 2025 as a relatively weak cycle, similar in magnitude to its predecessor Solar Cycle 24. Instead, Solar Cycle 25 is shaping up to be stronger.
In March 2022, the sun produced 146 solar flares, including one X-flare and 13 M-flares. Auroras were sighted as far south as Colorado (+38N) and Nebraska (+42N). Multiple shortwave radio blackouts disrupted communications on ships at sea and airplanes flying over the poles. If current trends continue, April will be even busier. Stay tuned. Solar flare alerts: SMS Text

https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/products/solar-cycle-progression
 
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/news/solar-cycle-25-forecast-update?fbclid=IwAR0II6o75ehEkIfRW-QP4F4w1ljXx89KsQrKdhEGeJvnIm6GviIFiEjdH34

SOLAR CYCLE 25 FORECAST UPDATE
published: Monday, December 09, 2019 22:30 UTC
The NOAA/NASA co-chaired, international panel to forecast Solar Cycle 25 released their latest forecast for Solar Cycle 25. The forecast consensus: a peak in July, 2025 (+/- 8 months), with a smoothed sunspot number (SSN) of 115. The panel agreed that Cycle 25 will be average in intensity and similar to Cycle 24.
 
Additionally, the panel concurred that solar minimum between Cycles 24 and 25 will occur in April, 2020 (+/- 6 months). If the solar minimum prediction is correct, this would make Solar Cycle 24 the 7th longest on record (11.4 years).
 
SPACE WEATHER PREDICTION CENTER
NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov
 
Are you a teacher or home schooling your children please go to:
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/content/additional-resources/#outreach
 
Storms from the Sun booklet download at:
https://www.swpc.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/images/u33/swx_booklet.pdf