Thursday, January 9, 2014

Monster Sunspot!

There's been a lot of talk the last couple of days about a huge sunspot, known as AR1944, which may cause some spectacular aurorae tonight. It's unlikely that I will see anything, I'm too far south, but I did get out today and managed to catch a pic of the offending sunspot!

It's the MASSIVE one!!

This again is NASA's image for comparison.

Source

Fingers crossed for some pretty skies for people slightly further north!

4 comments:

  1. Hi Jess, Did you manage to see anything? A friend in South Wales posted an amazing photo on facebook that he had taken. Sadly it was cloudy and raining here last night :-(

    How did you take the photo of the sun? I've just received a AstroZap Baader Solar Filter from FLO, but the instructions don't really say how to use it... Once it is attached to the front of the scope tube is it safe to look down the eyepiece? or should the image be projected onto some paper?

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  2. Nah, didn't see anything unfortunately, the clouds rolled in pretty quickly! Have seen some great photos online though!

    As far as I know, you just stick that filter on your scope and its safe to look through... Just make sure to check the filter paper is not damaged before you start! I have a homemade solar filter, made using a sheet of baader filter paper and it's perfect! Just be careful with it, it's kind of delicate! To take photos, as usual I just hold my camera up to the eyepiece and snap several million photos til one is half decent! :P The hardest thing with sunspots is getting decent focus! Have fun!

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  3. Thanks for the advice :) managed to get out and get a few snaps. Have upload the best one to my blog here. Not quite as good as yours though :P

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  4. I saw those Sun spots on Sunday, impressive for the Solar minimum. I have been colimating my 'scope today, what a chore. Jess, can you post a picture of your scope set-up as if you are looking at Orion or Sirius? Plenty of people never get the hang of Equatorial mounts you know.

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