October 3, 2014: H-alpha quiff on the sun during lunchtime

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Had a lunchtime session again. A great "filaprom" visible on the northwestern limb. It starts out well on the disk, and curves round the limb showing as a huge cloud of plasma against the black background of space. It almost looked a bit like the sun was sporting a tintin-like quiff. Just south of it I suddenly noticed a bright, near linear prom (pretty sure it wasn't there 5 minutes earlier) with a fainter streak to its north. The thin column of plasma slowly subsided and fell back onto the surface in a matter of 10-15 minutes. The fainter streak took a while longer to collapse. A little later, a small, very bright blob appeared just south of where the earlier prom had collapsed. it stayed put for quite a while, but to its north a prom started forming, emerging at an angle of about 45 degrees from the surface, and arcing a bit upwards towards its end. Towards the end of lunchtime, the bright blob did evolve into a little spike, but no big eruption could be seen (might have gone off by now, of course).

South of all this aciot, a large filament is arcing just about parallel to the limb (should be a nice prom tomorrow). near the centre of the disk, a large sunspot is visible, with an associated region of plage. several smaller filament are scattered across the disk. The eastern limb does not show much activity, but I hope some interesting stuff appears by Sunday, when I will be doing some outreach at the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute.

Several students and colleagues joined for a look. Really nice way to spend lunchtime.

[oldpink]

good to know the suns still there wall to wall cloud & rain here
nice to get others involved, I had the local police ask me what I was looking at the other day
so I showed them the sun and pointed out the spots, they were well impressed

[Pete Presland]

looks like there are two filaproms on the western limb, north and south. i have  had a go at trying to capture them both, not easy to get the filament and the prom part exposed.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Always hard to get the exposure right for those. Turning up gamma can help a bit

[Pete Presland]

just got a decent run on the northern one, i was wrong about the other it doesnt quite overlap the limb.

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

I think that southern one is the big filament running along the limb, but still just on the disk itself. Very impressive filament, could be a great (fila)prom shortly

[Floater]

Sounds like wonderfully busy stuff I'm missing. Good report, Michael, and vicarious pleasure for me.