H-alpha 30th May: Sketch & Report

[Qualia]

Had a little time on my hands, so thought I'd scan these sketches in of Saturday's Sun. The huge filament to the north of the sketch was roughly measured at over 700,000km in length. That's over twice the distance to the Moon from Earth. On the western limb was a humungous hedgerow forest fire vaulting into the darkness of space. Again, with the Microguide I estimated that it was over 500,000km in length and was so taken aback by its whorling beauty that I tried my hand at a more detailed sketched. Last, but not least, over on the eastern limb was quite an active region and looked fantastic even at a relatively low magnification of 40x. I counted a number of sunspots/pores amid a blazing network of plages and filaments.

White light was a tad calmer but no less beautiful. The active regions 2356/57 are developing as expected and there was quite a sea of faculea on the eastern and western limb.

May has been quite a month for solar viewing, it's been pretty much cloudless everyday, so without any further ado, I'm going to nip out and have a peek

By way of passing, the colour sketches were made using chalks on black paper, the white light was a simple B2 for sunspots and yellow pencil for faculae.

[Pig]

Excellent Rob

I find the numbers and physics associated with, and not limited to, our star extremely mind boggling. 700 & 500 thousand Km

[Qualia]

Aye, the figures do get quite crazy, Shaun

[David Smith]

So it really is you who has stollen our summer

[Davey-T]

Very nice Rob, been missing your sketches.

Dave

[Luke]

Lovely sketches, Rob.

A long clear spell at the weekend seems to be one hour here these days

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Great sketch with lots going on. I was unable to view all of this from Iceland, alas

[Qualia]

Cheers Michael and thank you for your support and kind words. Hope you enjoy you stay up north Iceland Brrrrrrr....

[Ibbo!]

I do like these

they must take some doing

please keep the sketches coming