Sketching The Busy Sun

[David Smith]

Great to see lots of activity on the Sun at the moment, makes sketching time consuming though!

Today's sketch on a template document that I created in LiberOffice ahead of the session.

Sketching came long, long before imaging for me and I still try to sketch during each solar session first and image later. For one thing this allows the scope time to acclimate to ambient temperature before I plug the camera in. Also sketching also gives me a method for counting and tracking sunspot numbers over time giving me data on activity levels which I find fascinating. Simple things

[Stu]

That's a really lovely sketch. Having looked at some of the images from the same time, it is amazingly accurate and detailed. Must be interesting tracking the activity over time. Have you been keeping records for long?

Stu

[David Smith]

A few years now. Hopefully I have attached a copy of the graph that I plug all the data into.

ZSN Chart.pdf

[Bizibilder]

It's nice to see someone sketching!

[Stu]

I'll say that's a few years! Really interesting to be able to track the solar cycles like that. Thanks for sharing it

Cheers

Stu

[Qualia]

Great stuff, David and thank you for sharing your art work

[David Smith]

Great stuff, David and thank you for sharing your art work

I think "art" is a bit of a strong word for it

[bish]

Great sketch. I often do simple sketches of sun but haven't had chance the last few days. Looks like I missed out on lots of activity. It's been fairly quiet when I've looked recently. My sketches are nothing like as detailed as yours though.

[David Smith]

The Sun continues to be very active. Today took me almost half an hour to sketch the complex groups that have appeared. The spot count number for today was the second highest I have ever recorded at 168 (highest was 169 on 22nd Oct 2011).

Dividing the spots up into groups can also be a challenge so I use this link as my reference. One of few institutions still sketching sunspots on a regular basis.

[bish]

Excellent sketch from today. I was just going to get my bins earlier and was side tracked. Looks like I'm missing all the action!

[David Smith]

Solar astronomy is almost bigger than night time stuff at the minute. By the time I have sketched and then imaged in white light followed by a good half hour studying the Halpha side of things with the PST I rack up quite a bit of time. I would really like to get into imaging with the PST but cannot really afford the right kit (namely a new laptop), oh and I quite fancy CaK imaging too

I figure we need to make the most of it though around solar maximum. Back in 2008 / 2009 I recorded a 20 month period with virtually no spot activity.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Some nifty sketches there. Time consuming indeed

[nightskystargazer]

David,

Nice sketches of the Sun .

CS,KLU,

,

Tom