And look at the Sun in Ha!! Incredible proms

[Highburymark]

Great day for solar Ha and WL today. The hedgerow prom is one of the largest I’ve ever seen

[SwiMatt]

Clouded over here 😭 happy looks to those who celebrate 🤣

[Roy Challen]

Yes, looked fantastic, lots of activity in 3664, nice detached proms, and the big prom on the receding limb. Great stuff!

[Mr Magoo]

Thanks for the heads-up. I was too late for the prom, but spent a pleasurable 2.5 hours sitting on a park bench in the sunshine, in a nice little park one street away,

with my M500 Mak and a homemade ND sun filter. 3664 is really impressive.

Mark, what scope and eyepiece did you use?

 

[Highburymark]

2 hours ago, Mr Magoo said:

Thanks for the heads-up. I was too late for the prom, but spent a pleasurable 2.5 hours sitting on a park bench in the sunshine, in a nice little park one street away,

with my M500 Mak and a homemade ND sun filter. 3664 is really impressive.

Mark, what scope and eyepiece did you use?

 

Sounds like a perfect afternoon.

I use a couple of 70mm Solarscope Ha filters in my TeleVue refractor (and a large reflective shroud to block out any extraneous light). Frankly, today a double stack set up wasn’t necessary. The proms would have been just as impressive with any solar scope or filter, and single stacked. 

[Nik271]

It was good wasn't it? I was free all the morning and just let the Quark stay on constantly powered on my 70 F7 refractor. Around 10am there was an X flare, it looked like AR 3664 was cracking open and you can see the brightness inside the Sun through the gaps. Lasted a long time too - at least 30 minutes.  Definitely made my day! 

[Highburymark]

19 minutes ago, Nik271 said:

It was good wasn't it? I was free all the morning and just let the Quark stay on constantly powered on my 70 F7 refractor. Around 10am there was an X flare, it looked like AR 3664 was cracking open and you can see the brightness inside the Sun through the gaps. Lasted a long time too - at least 30 minutes.  Definitely made my day! 

Excellent - I’ve only seen one X-class flare before. Didn’t realise there’d been one today.

[Mr Magoo]

43 minutes ago, Highburymark said:

Sounds like a perfect afternoon.

I use a couple of 70mm Solarscope Ha filters in my TeleVue refractor (and a large reflective shroud to block out any extraneous light). Frankly, today a double stack set up wasn’t necessary. The proms would have been just as impressive with any solar scope or filter, and single stacked. 

 

Hmm, seems refractors are the order of the day. I've been thinking about withdrawing my Tak DZ from the classifieds.

Would you say the Solarscope filters are superior to Baader Solar film? Is finer detail observable?

[C6rrules]

Really dramatic , Nick 

 

Edited May 9 by C6rrules

[Pete Presland]

Managed to get a look at the huge AR, easily visible with naked eye through eclipse glasses as well

[Roy Challen]

10 hours ago, Nik271 said:

was cracking open and you can see the brightness inside the Sun

Love this description 😀

[Stu]

10 hours ago, Mr Magoo said:

Would you say the Solarscope filters are superior to Baader Solar film? Is finer detail observable?

They are very different things. Solarscope filters are some of the best Ha filters which allow you to see prominences, filaments and other Ha features. Baader Solar film is the entry point to white light solar observing.which shows sunspots, active regions, granulation etc. A decent Herschel Wedge is the next step up for white light observing.

[Mr Magoo]

Thank you Stu, it was prominences and filaments I was hoping to see, but I'll stop looking for them now!

AR 3664 is a sight to behold in white light. Reading up on the subject yesterday it's apparent that this sunspot is a once in many decades event.

I've been looking at a decent Herschel Wedge for some time, it's now back on the shopping list, as is a Solarscope solar filter.

I'm back out observing shortly, another fine day.

[Nik271]

Yes another X flare right now 8:14am, even stronger!

[Roy Challen]

Just now, Nik271 said:

Yes another X flare right now 8:14am, even stronger!

Sadly , I'm at work now, no Ha scope, but I have some small bins to do projection with.

[Nik271]

It's now down to M class and decreasing. This one was different from yesterday it was localised in a triangular region just next to 3664.

I only got the end of it around 8:10am. Spaceweather says that at 7:55 it was X3.8.

I 

Edited May 10 by Nik271

[Stu]

32 minutes ago, Mr Magoo said:

is a Solarscope solar filter.

 

There are other, lower cost Ha options out there such as the Coronado PST and Lunt LS50 or Quark at the entry level, working up through larger aperture options.

[Nik271]

I could not resist a phone snap. Excuse the terrible quality, just to give an idea. By then the flare was down to M6 or so.

[Nik271]

And the recent activity from GOES:

[LukeTheNuke]

Thin cloud here again, and against my better judgement and despite having a backlog of stuff to do, I had to have a peek. I blame all of you, LOL! I think it's only more recently that I've realised that sites like this can be so helpful for keeping you engaged in the hobby. So a little thank you, while I'm on the subject. It makes a difference, and I think hobbies and interests can be something that puts an important spring in our step.

Anyway, my renewed appreciation for the gear Sarah and I have accumulated over the years continued today, and I was thinking how ace the Vixen Hal 130 tripod is plus a dual mount bar.

Oh yeah, that monster active region is so impressive! I loved the trail of smaller spots, artistically spaced out - there was so much detail in white light. H-alpha was very interesting too on the monster, a bit of flaring. I did get some pretty decent, steady views, despite the thin cloud. So it was well worth the (fairly minimal anyway) effort.

Oh, and I was pleased to see yesterday and today that my old Quark is okay on proms. The proms looked really faint the other day, and it has been a while since I used my Quark, but it was just the thin cloud robbing me of brightness on the proms that evening, it seems. I am due a windfall soon hopefully, and it's tempting to think about a Lunt (I'm trying not too look too closely at the 100 mm for sale, I hope someone snaps it up before I get my cash, LOL!) Part of me, though, enjoys using my different fracs for solar. Despite my problems with the Quark, there is a terrible temptation to buy a new one. I'll have a ponder and perhaps check with FLO if they check them first or would be okay about me returning it if I'm not happy with it. There is still the risk though of if it goes faulty and having to return it, being unsure what the quality will be like of what I get back. Or I suppose Solar Spectrum, though the price is much steeper.

Edited May 10 by LukeTheNuke

[Nik271]

@LukeTheNuke: The big prom is actually quite faint, I noticed that any cloud which dims the view even a little bit makes it disappear. So probably your Quark is ok.

I suggest you try a faster scope to see proms beeter, something in the F5 or F6 focal ratio. My small 70mm ED refractor is F6 and I find it gives a good balance between proms and chromosphere features with the Quark. If I want to see the chomosphere better I can just stop it down to F8.

[LukeTheNuke]

3 minutes ago, Nik271 said:

@LukeTheNuke: The big prom is actually quite faint, I noticed that any cloud which dims the view even a little bit makes it disappear. So probably your Quark is ok.

I suggest you try a faster scope to see proms beeter, something in the F5 or F6 focal ratio. My small 70mm ED refractor is F6 and I find it gives a good balance between proms and chromosphere features with the Quark. If I want to see the chomosphere better I can just stop it down to F8.

Thanks for the tip. I do usually normally use an F9 with the Quark for visual (the lovely SW ED-90 DS Pro - I love that thing! Light, sharp). It was just the thin cloud, I am 99.9% sure. The thing is that my wife's Quark degraded over time and is now much worse on proms than it was before. So I wondered if the same had happened to mine. Thankfully, not. Phew! My Quark is far from perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing.

[Stu]

Planning on putting the 102mm PST mod out today. Would love to get ‘the Beast’ out but don’t think I have time. Might do later if seeing is good.

[Thalestris24]

They say a solar storm is due to hit today... Mind you, they've said that before!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-13402759/Severe-solar-storm-watch-alert-NOAA.html

 

[Nik271]

36 minutes ago, LukeTheNuke said:

Thanks for the tip. I do usually normally use an F9 with the Quark for visual (the lovely SW ED-90 DS Pro - I love that thing! Light, sharp). It was just the thin cloud, I am 99.9% sure. The thing is that my wife's Quark degraded over time and is now much worse on proms than it was before. So I wondered if the same had happened to mine. Thankfully, not. Phew! My Quark is far from perfect, but it's a lot better than nothing.

The proms are better seen when the bandwidth of the etalon is a bit wider, about 1 angstrom instead its nominal value of 0.6 at the recommended focal ratio of F7 and  above. The solar disk will be a bit washed out as a result.