May 11, 2015: Early evening H-alpha session

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

When I came home from work the sky was still clear, so I quickly set up the SOlar Spectrum + APM 80 H-alpha set-up

As the filter was warming up, I checked how Frank was getting on with his English vocabulary lessons at school, and when I had gone through one chapter went out to the scope again. I decided that as dinner was only 15 minutes away, and the sun was wedged between two trees there was no time for imaging, so I just had a look with the Vixen 25mm ortho. The views around AR2339 were just amazing. I observed the sun with the SolarMax 60 during lunchtime but for contrast and resolution the Solar Spectrum has it beaten by several miles. You could trace intricate patterns in the filaments surrounding the AR, and in particular the patterns in its "wake". They really look like patterns you get in so called vortex shedding turbulent flows, like the spectacular example in our own atmosphere seen here:

It is probably a very different process, but the similarity was striking