No prominences, AR1785-1787 is magnificent

[jkwhinfrey]

I was taking a quick look through the PST this lunchtime and was stunned by the detail in the new, huge active region 1785.

As I was studying this I noticed a very bright spot in the neighbouring AR1787... a solar flare maybe? I checked out my VLF monitoring kit and the GOES X-ray data online, and sure enough a small C-class flare at exactly that time :-)

The Sun is rapidly becoming my favourite observational target, just a shame about the hay fever.

James

[mog3768]

Would love a proper solar scope but that will have to wait a while, but did have an hour this morning with my equinox 120 with solar filter there were three what I call island chains of sun spots. One group really active. It must be great to see those flares

[jkwhinfrey]

There's a lot to see in white light and other wavelengths at the moment. The large group you saw is probably AR1785, and the one trailing behind it is where I'm fairly sure I saw the flare.

The flare itself is seen as a significant localised brightening. There's not a lot of detail through my PST since I'm using about 40x magnification. Exciting all the same :-)) There's been a little more activity since, so may be the Sun's building up to something... or not, only time will tell. That big group could generate a sizeable flare at some point.

It's possible to see flares in white light, but it's rare I believe, so serious bragging rights if you manage it ;-)

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Loads of detail on the surface. I did spot some small proms on the western limb, at 16.7x with my 24mm EP. This tends to pick up fainter proms better than higher magnification