SEPTEMBER 10TH - WL - IS A SUNSPOT NUMBER OF 124 THE HIGHEST OF THE CURRENT CYCLE?

[paulastro]

I observed late this afternoon, and observed with the 102ED F7.  I saw five of the six sunspot groups shown on spaceweather.com,  but I couldn't see anything of AR2870.  

Below is a single frame taken with the Olympus E-M5 Mk11 taken at 5.56 pm, and a crop taken from it showing three of the ARs.

spaceweather.com gave a sunspot number of 124, presumably the highest of the current solar cycle?  This presumably included AR2870 which may have disapated by the time I was observing.

 

 

[Pete Presland]

The activity level has certainly increased dramatically recently, its getting like the good old days 6 years back when stuff like this was happening.

[paulastro]

1 hour ago, Pete Presland said:

The activity level has certainly increased dramatically recently, its getting like the good old days 6 years back when stuff like this was happening.

Yes Pete,  I have a lot of photos and sketches taken at the last maximum when I was lucky enough to own a double stack 60mm solar scope.  Looking back now its hard to believe it was as good.  As you say, it's certainly had an uplift in activity recently.

With white light as well, which I've been observing for over four cycles.

 

[Pete Presland]

10 hours ago, paulastro said:

Yes Pete,  I have a lot of photos and sketches taken at the last maximum when I was lucky enough to own a double stack 60mm solar scope.  Looking back now its hard to believe it was as good.  As you say, it's certainly had an uplift in activity recently.

With white light as well, which I've been observing for over four cycles.

 

Wow, four cycles!  Have you got a stand out memory from that time?

[paulastro]

8 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Wow, four cycles!  Have you got a stand out memory from that t

Pete,I think I first started observing sunspots in 1968 or 1969, but I didn't keep very good notes at first.

I do remember some of the big individual spots.  One particularly in 1971 I think which I observed with a friend, we put an observation in The Astronomer Magazine.

The great thing was in those days (no internet!)  was you would never know what was on the sun unless you observed yourself.  I can still remember the excitement I felt if there was a large individual spot or group of spots on view.

Below is a a page of my observing book for Oct 17th 1970, showing one of my early solar drawings.  The second pic shows me and a friend (l'm on the right) taken on Feb 25th 1971.  We had earlier been thwarted in seeing a large partial solar eclipse.  Yes, that's correct, when it was over the cloud moved away leaving a perfect blue sky!

Happily I've seen many solar eclipses since, including total eclipses in 1973 and 2006.