Sun observation

[Demonperformer]

Just come in from having a look at the sun.  Failed miserably at getting the webcam into focus, so going to have to describe what I saw.

40mm aperture, 660mm focal length, 47x magnification

18 May 2014 1700BST

In total, I could make out ten sunspots on the disc, in three distinct groups.

The most obvious group were about half way across the sun, in the lower half.  There was one big sunspot (A), which had a diffuse edge to it.  At the ten o'clock position from A were a close pair of almost identical spots (B&C), aligned along the same 10-4 line. Below these two, at the right angle of a triangle with A was a spot that was slightly bigger than B/C (D) and next to that at the 11 o'clock position was a much smaller/fainter spot (E).

The second group was on the lower left edge of the sun. This group consisted on two spots, one (F) was about the same size as D, and next to it at the 3 o'clock position, was a diffuse spot (G) of a similar size to F, but being diffuse was less easy to see.  Both of these spots had a distinct oval shape to them, with the major axis pointing towards the centre of the sun's disc.

The third group was much harder to see and was located just left of centre of the disc. The first spot (H) was between B/C and E in size, with two smaller spots next to each other above it.  The one on the left (I) was by far the smallest of the spots I saw, and I could only be sure that it was a genuine sunspot by moving the scope a little and watching it move with the sun .  The one on the right (J) was about the same size as E.  The shape of this little group reminded me rather of the three main stars in Aries (with H being alpha and I&J being beta and gamma).

Well, that (for what it is worth) is what I noted as seeing at the scope.  I haven't done a lot of describing what I saw (don't do much visual), so hope it makes sense.

Thanks for looking.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Nice report, thanks for posting. I think it makes very good sense