Utah-Astronomy

Download

utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com

December 2021

1 participants
2 discussions

More solar flares in H-a light
by John M. Craig 22 Dec '21

22 Dec '21

Hi Friends, The sun is really active now--a whole series of active regions on the near side. (It's totally cloudy here in Utah County though.) If you go to this site (Cerro Tololo H-a images as a movie) https://gong2.nso.edu/products/scaleView/view.php?configFile=configs/hAlpha… And set the Start day to 2021-12-21 End day to 2021-12-22; try an Image increment of 5 (that's minutes between frames) & Load Then watch the line of sunspots and plages along the southern side of the sun, there's a number of flares. Very cool. You can see the views from Learmonth also but there's some images that are clouded out somewhat. The El Teide scope doesn't have as good resolution. Big Bear doesn't have as many images as either Cerro Tololo or Learmonth, so maybe try 1 as the Image Increment. It does show a good flare between about 17:53 and 18:43 If you have H-a gear and do any kind of outreach or educational presentations, being able to show what a flare looks like in H-a helps illustrate the difference between a prominence and a flare. (When I show prominences to people they generally refer to them as "flares" and being able to show the difference is fun, I think.) Happy Solstice! John

1 0

Interesting H-alpha sun view today
by John M. Craig 20 Dec '21

20 Dec '21

Some wispy prominences, but lots of spots, plages, and filaments. Haven't checked out white-light, but I imagine it'd be pretty neat too. Should still be good tomorrow, weather permitting. Happy Solstice! John

1 0