Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

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Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by marktownley »

With the hottest day of the year so far forecast on Saturday I got up early to make the most of the cooler temperatures and better seeing that early morning provides. I used the Coronado SM90 and first up was the full disk, this scope seems to come on band more after it has been pointing at the sun for a while, and this disk was taken pretty much as soon as it got on the mount so isn't quite there, but it does give an overview of what could be mistaken as a blank disk.

ImageHa-FD-SS--BW by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageHa-FD-SS--colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

The disks were taken at prime focus of the SM90 with the Grasshopper 3 ICX916M chip. I decided to stick with the SM90 in single stack mode and using a 3x barlow with my new Grasshopper 3 with IMX174 chip to get a better image sample. First up the turbulent region of plasma that marks the area where we saw sunspots several rotations ago:

ImageEx-AR.-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

ImageEx-AR.-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Nearer the centre of the disk and also on the equatorial band was a small emerging flux region that looks like it might have sported a few pores in white light.

Imageemerging-flux-region-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imageemerging-flux-region-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

All this activity on the equator is associated with cycle 24, however if we look towards more polar regions this is where solar jet streams associated with cycle 25 will manifest themselves, this is happening at the moment, it's all small scale and low flux strength but it is there. The next image is of the suns north pole, you can see the brighter points of polar faculae towards the very top of the image, these are also visible in white light and they increase in intensity during solar minimum which is where we are now. There are 2 small filaments which mark the position of the solar jetstream, and going further left a few bright points can be seen, these don't have enough field strength to be emerging flux regions (yet!), but in the months ahead this will change.

Imagepolar-region-cycle-25-bright-points-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagepolar-region-cycle-25-bright-points--colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Meanwhile, hunting for cycle 25 in the southern polar regions I was pleased to see a small emerging flux region left of centre in this image:

Imagecycle-25-efr-bw by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Imagecycle-25-efr-colour by Mark Townley, on Flickr

Will be interesting to see if this produced any small pores, maybe? Keep your eyes peeled folks. everyone keeps saying the sun is blank, it definitely isn't, it's just harder to spot features. Hopefully these bands of magnetism in the suns polar latitudes will increase in intensity sooner rather than later and give us all some decent activity to focus on.

Hope you like these,

Mark


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by Carbon60 »

Nice images, Mark and interesting commentary. Let us all hope for more activity soon.

Stu.


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by marktownley »

Thanks Stu, i'm hoping the early mornings this week give me some clear skies before work.


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by PaulB »

If you don't stop and look. You'd be forgiven the Solar disk was blank. But that's not the case.
Very nice images and commentary Mark.

Fingers crossed for some activity in the coming week.


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by marktownley »

Thanks Paul!


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by ffellah »

Excellent images with your SM90, Mark. It seems like you have a really good scope there. The sun surface is very evenly illuminated, great technique. Have you tried this scope with prominences yet ? The single stack should work pretty well on that.

Franco


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by marktownley »

Thanks Franco, not really tried the proms, they are on my list though. It is a good scope, very flat. I knew this before I bought it, so when the chance came up to purchase it I knew I had to drop the cash and buy it. It also sits very well with my seeing conditions, i'd rather have a smaller scope I can use most of the time rather than a bigger scope I can only use infrequently.


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by Montana »

A very interesting tour round the Sun Mark, I thoroughly enjoyed this post. The Sun is not blank if you look in the right places :hamster:

:bow :bow
Alexandra


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by MAURITS »

Excellent disk"s Mark.
Is this done without flatframes?


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by pedro »

I will try to image these bright spots during the weekend. Nice post and interesting comments Mark


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Re: Saturday Sunshine with the SM90 - 29th June

Post by marktownley »

Thanks everyone! No flats Franco, just as it is off the camera chip.


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