July 2, 2015: Glorious H-alpha Lunchtime

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Had a lovely time outside looking at the nearest star with the SolarMax 60mm scope. Seeing seemed better than during my early morning imaging session (although it could hardly have been worse). North-east, there is a curious curved prom undulating along the limb. At times it almost seemed to trace the outline of a swimming duck. A lot further south, a nice little filaprom could be seen. AR2373 looks pretty active still, with some small-scale flaring going on, and several filaments surrounding the main sunspot region. On the south of the disk there are a couple of fluffy-looking filaments. A similar, curved, broad filament is visible on the north-eastern disk, close to the "duck" prom. The most spectacular feature was a small active region right on the eastern limb, with a single sunspot showing just on this side of the limb,  and a very bright region on the limb itself. This is very active indeed. It first sprouted a trio of surge-like spikes, with the centre one subsiding quite quickly. The two outer ones then slowly started to subside, but then suddenly brightened again, growing visibly longer. A few minutes later, the southernmost stopped growing whilst the northern one kept extending, curving a bit to the south and splitting. Finally the southern spike started to shrink again, whilst the northern remained more-or-less constant.

Really nice dynamic area, which should be heralding a nice new AR

[xtreemchaos]

great report mate,wall to wall cloud here in south wales.thanks for sharing..charl..

[paulastro]

Thanks Michael, that's just the sort of description I like to read. I almost felt I was there. (I was actually up at The Asronomy Centre in rain and mist)