Solar WL and Ha session - 4th March 2022

[Stu]

At around 4.30pm on Friday, I finished the last, and best, of a series of short solar observing sessions in my garden, viewing the Sun in the breaks in the cloud as it blew through.

I started out in the morning using my grab and go setup; Tak FC76DC with Baader CoolWedge and binoviewers. The views looked pretty promising, with plenty of activity going on so I stepped up to the FC100DC, with my Hydrogen Alpha scope side by side, a Vixen 102mm modified PST. I was using the AZ75 mount received back from Rowan for final testing, on a Vixen HAL130 tripod.

In white light, the most immediately obvious feature was a series of three spots, descending in size left to right (refractor view) and identified as AR12957 and 12961. Extending a line from the largest of these three showed a further small spot which I think was 12959. Following further along from this to the limb, there was a new active region, 12960 which looks very promising; quite complex with multiple umbral regions, surrounded by complex penumbra and embedded in an area of faculae. Projecting right back along the line of spots to the opposite limb and there were 12954 and 12955 slowly disappearing  around the corner and now looking quite forshortened. Again, these guys were in a lovely patch of faculae. Finally, taking a perpendicular line up from 12961 led to a tiny spot representing 12958. This last one was not visible in the 76, but was in the 100, showing the resolution benefits of aperture. All these show up in the attached image from SpaceWeather.

As is often the way, the seeing got better later in the day, and whilst never excellent, there were periods when it was better and the petal-like structure in the penumbral regions of the main spots was clear.

Switching to Hydrogen Alpha, and what a treat I was in for. I find it very difficult to describe the views in any meaningful sense but I’ll try. My scope is based on a Vixen 102mm, with 1000mm focal length and an internal ERF and the back end of a PST. It behaves like a 100mm PST, but is specifically setup for high power views through binoviewers. The field is very even, with no hotspot, but full disk views are not possible with binoviewers. I can just about get full disk with a Leica Zoom, but prefer the higher powers and relaxed viewing with two eyes. I use a black out hood to cut out glare and it really improves the contrast.

The first feature I came across, and which actually made me go ‘wow’ out loud, was a beautiful arcing filament, very clearly defined near AR12960. In fact this was two filaments, one large and one small alongside it. Each of the main active regions was a mass of swirling flux lines arcing around a large area surrounding the dark poles of the AR. In 12960 there were very bright plage between these two poles.

There was so much to see, two very good examples of filaproms, where prominences are partly crossing in front of the disk turning into filaments. My scope is better at proms than filaments because it is only a single stack, but today the surface detail really was excellent.

Two other filaments stood out. A thin, dark and sinuous one near 12957, and one that looked like a row of three patches, not sure what causes this effect. It shows up clearly in the upper right quadrant of the Gong image.

As if this wasn’t amazing enough, there was a real treat in store for me. Appearing at around 5 O’clock in my view was a prominence, quite well developed with a fine arcing trail looping back down to the surface. It is at just above 9 O’clock in the attached image from Gong. As I watched, I picked up a bright plasma ‘bomb’ in this trail, in the part that was arcing down towards the surface. I’ve seen this sort of thing before, so watched carefully and over the course of about three or four minutes, it slowly moved down until it merged with the spicule line. Quite incredible to view, and must have been travelling at hundreds of thousands of miles an hour; to see it moving in real time was amazing.

I often prefer white light solar because of the contrast, brightness and detail of the image, but today, Ha was definitely the one that knocked my socks off.

Thanks for reading this far if you made it!

Images attached are a labelled white light one from SpaceWeatherLive, Ha from Solar Gong which shows the features I tried to describe, although the scope detail was far batter. Next are four smartphone images , and finally there are some sketches made on a Remarkable 2 ePaper tablet added for info which I’ve been experimenting with. 

[Kon]

Nice report! Your sketches are excellent and they appear like EP photos.