Solar Imaging Session - August 4, 2011

For the whole week, I took charge of our household as my wife had to go away for a 5 day office seminar thus leaving me to take care of my kid for 5 days. But the weather here in Manila was really bad since 3 typhoons crossed Luzon area for the past weeks thus either it rain hard, flood the streets or total cloud out!

But with my regular solar observation and imaging session to be able to start more or less around mid September because of roof obstruction, I couldn't help myself getting jealous on how my other solar observing friends around the world are posting nice images of the Sun both in white light and Ha wavelength while I'm stuck with a lousy sky as well as lousy roof obstruction! :) LOL

Although the seeing condition is not good, the sky was surprisingly clear this morning and with a small window of opportunity for me to observe the Sun near my laundry area, I had to haul down my solar imaging setup from 3rd floor down to the ground floor and with more than 3 months of no observation in my house, I had to setup from scratch and assemble the mount as well as check my scopes. After around 15 minutes of hauling down my stuff, I was able to get my first chance to observe old friend Sol and see how he is doing :)

I initially setup the Coronado PST-Ha and was able to see 4 beautiful sunspot groups as well as a nice group of eruptive prominences that looks like a hairy caterpillar crawling along the NE limb :) Newly designated small AR11266 Sunspot Group is near the caterpillar shaped prominence that is near the NE limb. I quickly start imaging the Sun in Ha and below are the 2 images that I was able to capture in Ha wavelength.




After imaging the Sun in Ha, I still got a small amount of time before the Sun will get obstructed again by the other side of the roof, I quickly install my refractor and image the Sun in white light wavelength. AR11263 Sunspot group is big and beautiful. It is almost smack in the middle of the Sun's disk while another big group, AR11261 can be seen beside AR11263 while the smaller AR11260 sunspot group can be seen near the NW limb. The 3 groups are almost near the equatorial zone of the Sun and does that mean that we might already be starting the new solar maximum cycle already???? Although I estimate solar maximum cycle to start more or less around mid year of 2013, maybe I might be wrong on this and who knows? Maybe it is already the start of the new solar maximum cycle this year end??? Who knows but the best thing to do is try to observe and image the sunspots on a regular basis which I plan to do once mid September arrives :)

Below are close up images of the 3 sunspot groups in white light wavelength: